


Walking Dead: Brave New Girl

by ProphecyGirl



Category: Fear the Walking Dead (TV), Lexark - Fandom, The 100 (TV), The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV), clexa - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - The Walking Dead Fusion, Angst and Feels, BAMF Alicia Clark, Canon-Typical Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Clarke Griffin Deserves Better, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Divergent Timelines, Drug Addiction, Dubious Science, Eventual Smut, F/F, Family Dynamics, Family: the ties that bind (& gag), Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurricanes & Typhoons, Mental Health Issues, Mild Gore, Multiverse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Zombie Apocalypse, Pre-Zombie Apocalypse, Slow Burn, Smol bean cowgirl Clarke, Surprisingly Canon Compliant, Walkers (Walking Dead), Zombie Apocalypse, mortal peril hours are 24/7, the althea tapes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:33:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 67,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23297068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProphecyGirl/pseuds/ProphecyGirl
Summary: Clarke finds herself in an unfamiliar and terrifying world, where a girl with Lexa’s face who’s lost everything is her only hope for survival.Pinprick goosebumps spread across her skin and scorching tears filled her eyes rapidly. Her tongue malfunctioned. Time ran backwards and upside down. Down was up, up was down, backwards was front ways, front ways was sideways. The moon and sun switched places, and then Clarke became either very small or very large as compared to the universe.Standing before her with pale skin and a dull sort of rage in her eyes, was the one person Clarke had been certain she would never, ever see again."Lexa?"*I genuinely don’t think you need to be familiar with F/TWD beyond "zombies & emotional struggling" to read this. Anything you need to know about the handful of those characters that might show up here, I’ll include in-text or the notes.
Relationships: Abby Griffin/Jake Griffin, Alicia Clark & Clarke Griffin, Alicia Clark/Clarke Griffin, Clarke Griffin/Lexa, John Dorie/June
Comments: 164
Kudos: 874





	1. How We're Made

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in Season 4 of “Fear the Walking Dead” just before the storm hits, but Alicia doesn’t run into Charlie; and Season 6 of “The 100”, when the Flame is destroyed to save Madi. Everything else about both worlds is canon and probably doesn't matter, unless later specified. :)
> 
> I had a single scene rolling around in my head for months between Clarke and Alicia, and I really just couldn’t get away from my messy lil sass queens. I figured since I’m really behind on everything already, why not take on yet another massive fic project?

_'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse.   
'It's a thing that happens to you.’_

\- Margery Williams, ‘The Velveteen Rabbit”

**How We're Made**

What occupied Clarke’s mind more than anything else these days was her growing sense that Hell was slightly more subtle and much more personalized than any of the old-world religions had imagined. Hellfire and brimstone was for amateur crimes being punished by amateur torturers; Satan had to have far more flare than that, legendary anti-hero that he was.

No, Clarke suspected that she had called Hell her home more than once already; and if she was correct, she had a fairly comprehensive overview of reality's inferno.

Hell was an irradiated bunker littered with bodies, some painfully small; an empty forest with only the panther cats and sticker-bushes to speak to; the last gasp of humanity uttered upon the slippery, blood-slicked floor of a fighting pit.

Hell was a field strewn with hundreds of massacred warriors of noble and ignoble intent alike; bloodstained cages in the mountain where humanity's nightmares grew darker than ever, and where some—like Echo—had stumbled through the afterbirth of betrayal, their bodies raw and minds flinching in fear, right before Clarke's very eyes. They'd been in hell too, she'd known it even then.

Hell was Lexa's lips gone lifeless against her own, their tears mixing as her last breath escaped Lexa's chest and was subsequently breathed into Clarke's own. She'd relished the taste of it on her tongue--spiced honey mead, mint leaf, and admittedly, a bit like their shared flavor. Unsurprising that their arousal still lingered faintly on Lexa's lips--it had only been minutes since they'd last tasted each other, fully and finally, finally, after so many missed connections between them, _finally_. Such sweet, delicious relief they'd both found for a moment.

Clarke would never forget the taste, and she visibly keened in that new, sadistically heartbreaking, earth shattering moment, refusing to breathe as though she could swallow Lexa's death and take it into herself instead. Clarke watched her beloved's chest deflate back down as it emptied of breath for the last time, and it was an image that would certainly keep her icy cold and shivering, even on the most hellishly humid of nights.

Hell was grasping empty air where Charlotte had once stood, or the strange lack of resistance as she slid a knife between the ribs and into the chest of a boy she thought she could've loved in another life, but had killed in this one. Hell was the spoiled fruit stench of rotting corpses; like the stinging, sour burnt ashes of cremains; the breathless gasp of innocence lost as someone you loved was floated into the vast vacuum of nothingness you all orbited in.

Orbit was a funny sort of word. It had a scientific definition involving the gravitational pull of a given object; but it also referred to yourself. Clarke's gravitational pull had grown stronger, larger, and more magnetic over the years. It had once been just her family, and Wells, and school; drawing and chess, when she had the time. Now, though, when Clarke searched her surroundings, she found so much more there. Amidst the generous collection of spacejunk lay all her most hidden secrets and public failures, and, at the risk of sounding righteous, all those whose lives she had touched and been touched by. It was humbling, really.

Then, with the thunderclap intensity of a supernova, the largest planet in her orbit had been ousted from its throne. Where Lexa had once peacefully—and then painfully—bobbed in Clarke's gravity larger than life, there now there lay the scorched earth that had propped up its new champion:

The _real_ Clarke Griffin.

Clarke didn't know exactly how it all worked; the science of it. At times she wondered if even its creator, Becca, had fully understood the scientific power she had wielded so generously, so haphazardly.

When the Flame had been removed from Clarke--the Real Clarke--after the City of Light, a backup was made. The Flame had functioned as intended: when it was removed, or the host died it backed up the consciousness and life memories of the most recent host to be passed onto the next. And so, Commander or not, Clarke's backup had simply.. existed. She didn't exist and then she did, just like everyone. And she _was_ Clarke, no doubt; at least, a version of her that was every bit as real as the backup of Lexa had been in the City of Light.

Clarke 2.0, in fact, was _painfully_ real; burdened by all of Clarke's sins, which she had been borne into but not committed herself, and cursed with a consciousness soaked in guilt she hadn't herself earned. She wouldn't claim the responsibility or the pain, though; mostly because it felt like invalidating the Real Clarke in some way. She respected Real Clarke enough to maintain second place in pain-claiming. Her own was merely a _copy_ of pain; her entire existence was an invalidation of Real Clarke, if you really thought about it for awhile.

She tried not to, truthfully.

It was strange to worship someone you hated so virulently; more so if it was yourself in a different life. Particularly if you were lucky enough to have a life inside a physical body. Still, she felt the weight of things as surely as if they had happened to her, and for all intents and purposes, they had, and she was rightfully traumatized by the things she’d experienced when she’d still been part of the Real Clarke.

Oddly enough, despite once being the same person—technically, anyway—the two Clarkes had never actually met; not directly. Clarke had watched, seething with jealousy and quaking in fear as she watched through Madi’s eyes, saw herself from a new perspective. Once, during the whole Josephine fiasco, Clarke had felt the envy unfurling inside herself, wondering if there might be an opportunity to have a real body after all—and her own body, at that..

Had the Real Clarke known Clarke 2.0’s thoughts, and how closely they entwined with Josephine’s at that time, she would have destroyed the Flame far sooner; so maybe it was better that Real Clarke hadn’t known she existed in the first place. She no doubt thought that if a backup had been made at all during her tryst inside the Flame, Becca would have destroyed it.

Sometimes Clarke wished she had. Given the unpleasantness of existence in general and her own in particular, it might've been easier to simply.. _not_. But Becca had shown a strange mercy to the pale copy of the true Clarke--or, at least Clarke had _thought_ it was mercy; before she spent years locked away in the most hidden depths of the Flame--left alive by Becca (or perhaps by her presumably limited power within the Flame itself; Becca was only a pale copy of herself as well, after all.)

She was only here in the first place because she took the Flame from its rightful owner, Ontari; she was only alive because she used the Flame to save everyone from the City of Light. Because of that, Becca had explained, she would allow this pale copy of Clarke to exist. Her--essence? Spirit? Soul, or simply her Clarkeness, perhaps--would be allowed to stay in the Flame. Becca would allow her to continue existing, but locked away, in a separate place. Unable to interact with Lexa, wherever she might be in the strange digital worlds contained in the Flame, or with Madi, once she'd taken it herself. 

Clarke had considered violating Becca's decree a few times--mostly when the loneliness became overwhelming. She'd once even dreamed up a map in her mindspace--it looked just like the Mount Weather map she'd been given, back when she was still the real Clarke, but she just knew if she followed the map, it would lead her wherever she wished in the mindspaces.

She considered it; then gave it to Becca so she'd no longer be tempted to violate their tenuous truce. She wasn't sure if it would have led Becca to destroy her, but she decided seeing Lexa or talking to Madi wasn’t worth it. They likely wouldn't even have laid eyes on one another before Becca—omnipotent as she was in the world she’d created—figured out what was going on and put a swift end to it and to Clarke herself.

Besides; she wasn't even the Clarke that Lexa or Madi, or Bellamy or even her own mother wanted. She was newer, and different in many ways. She loved them—or at least, she thought she did. She had burst into existence with love for them already filling her heart, but she suspected that even if she’d had some way to communicate with them, the feeling wouldn’t have been mutual, anyway. There were two Clarkes after all, and one of them was real; they’d never met the other one. They’d see her as the enemy, as a threat to the Real Clarke that they loved.

The other had spent years floating in her solitary mindspace with her heart growing darker, and her rage quietly building in her chest. And certainly no one would choose the monster over the girl. Not willingly, anyway. And Clarke 2.0 had become some kind of a monster, some kind of a beast, as she spent those years floating alone and ruminating on her sins.

And, as one of her favorite movies back on the Ark had said, " _Who could ever learn to love a Beast_?"

Particularly if the Beast didn't think she was worth loving; wouldn’t let anyone close. Not after Lexa. It wasn’t worth it. Getting close to people just meant more pain someday.

So the love-starved Beast, the manufactured monster of a broken girl, floated aimlessly through the years, locked away in her mindspace until she woke from her lazy dream to find the world was burning to ash around her. She heard the screams of the former Commanders-- _Lexa_ , she thought with a pain in her stomach--but there was little she could do. She was powerless inside the Flame, an unwanted house guest.

Still. It hadn't been such a bad deal, Clarke thought. She wasn't _really_ Clarke, after all, as Becca liked to remind her at their regular visits. A leniency granted by Becca; she said so Clarke wouldn't go insane from her loneliness, banished from the other leftover copies of real people that were her only option for companionship in this form.

Anyway, she _wasn't_ the real Clarke, and that was the rub. The Real Clarke was somewhere on planet Alpha, sobbing as she tried to save her daughter. As _Sheidheda_ burst out of the Flame and into the Eligius, dragging who knew how many Commanders with him in the process.

_Lexa_ , Clarke thought again, with a sharp pain in her chest as she was flung forth violently from the mindspace. She caught a wispy but nauseating glimpse of the dead Flame in the Real Clarke's hand, as she herself was forced from it and flung into a darkness that seemed to last forever. She thought she must be dead(deleted?) for sure then, but she retained an awareness that she somehow still existed, to some degree.

She inhaled sharply when the pain hit her, rattling her mind like a sucker punch to the soul. And then, suddenly, she landed on a hard, tiled floor with enough impact that her teeth rattled violently in her jaw, and she felt blood bursting from her lip and nose as her head slammed into a metal box of some kind. She tasted blood, and she heard--

_Growling_?

Something that had probably once been a man was stumbling down the wide hallway Clarke now realized she was in. She pulled herself up on the locker that had damaged her face, and stared in horror at the shambling man who approached her.

There was no way he should be walking, not with his innards hanging from exposed rib and pelvic bones. He looked dead, and he smelled dead; but he was closing in on Clarke. His rasps grew louder and more frequent, and he seemed excited to get closer to his target. Clarke let out a yelp and bolted away from the living dead man just as he leaned in and tried to.. _bite_ her?

"No!" she yelled, like the very, very dead man who apparently wanted to eat her, would just listen and give up.

She shot around a corner and skidded to an abrupt stop, gazing at the open lobby of the school building. There were dozens of them, and not just adults; there were many children as well, and they all seemed just as upsettingly dead as the man behind her. They slowly turned as one towards Clarke's noise, and her blood ran ice cold in her veins.

Oh, _boy_ was she _Screwed-with-a-capital-S_. It seemed unfair, even in the moment. She’d tried so hard to survive, to keep her people alive (or at least, the real Clarke had; Clarke supposed she was due _some_ credit for all that, at least, especially since she was about to die)—just to end up getting eaten, of all things. If that wasn’t a great irony of life, then she had no idea what was. What a truly messy ending to a truly messy life.

Clarke was about to try to stuff herself in a locker as a last resort—she’d certainly begun to question how bad things actually had been inside the Flame; at least there, nobody was trying to bite or kill her—when she heard a voice over the rising din of the growling people.

“Move back!”

Clarke didn’t blink before following the instruction she’d been given; if someone wanted to save her, she was more than happy to respect their authority. She'd also gladly raise their kids for them, run their farm, even give them a kidney or a foot or something, if they needed it.

Clarke didn’t have _any_ leadership skills, or even any survival skills, when you were talking about the reaper-like creatures, and she was already far more tired than she’d been when the Hundred had landed. She was more than happy to take instructions from someone who had been in this world longer than the five minutes or so she had.

Clarke moved back from the approaching group of dead people, just as something was flung into the foul-smelling crowd. The sound of glass shattering, the smell of something vaguely familiar—some kind of grain alcohol, if she had to guess, strong enough to smell it over the rotting bodies just faintly—and then the crowd of dirty, sour-smelling, dead-but-not-really-dead-dead people began to break apart as another bottle sailed past.

The second Molotov did the trick; Clarke watched in awe as the flames spread rapidly across the room. Her face quickly changed from awe to disbelief to disgust, and then to fear as the flames licked the ceiling; they were still moving around, even the ones that were already engulfed in flames. She watched as a young teen girl who vaguely resembled Madi, was burnt to near ash before she finally stopped growling and reaching for Clarke with her hair lit up like a candle wick.

Clarke couldn’t breathe.

She tried, and she couldn’t, and the panic was filling her chest. She didn’t know what to do or where to run, and the heavy fear that was settling in her gut was definitely going to get her killed. This was nothing like her world. Reapers were resistant to pain, but the girl who looked like Madi hadn't seemed to even notice her entire head was engulfed in flame. It was like A.L.I.E.'s army of people who felt no pain, if they were all a bunch of rotting corpses.

“Are you crazy? Go!”

Whoever had thrown the molotov was yelling at her, and Clarke forced herself to push her fear, confusion, and existential crisis away; then bolted towards the door. She heard boots slamming into the hard flooring, and then there was steady panting behind her.

“Go, go, go! Keep moving!” The voice snapped urgently, practically in Clarke’s ear.

Clarke, for her part, was in a complete daze, rapidly approaching a total lack of function. She found herself roughly shoved through a doorway, at the same moment she’d decided to give up and kiss the floor. Maybe she could distract the monsters with a nice, undercooked Clarke-Roast and allow her brave knight to escape mostly unscathed from the failed rescue mission.

Instead, she was kissing the floor in a classroom, while her savior was thumping around by the door behind her; barricading, it sounded like. Clarke wanted to stand, she wanted to _help_ , wanted to at least speak; but there were people out there trying to _eat her_ , and she hadn’t quite been able to make her peace with that just yet.

“How stupid are you, anyway? Wandering into an abandoned building full of walkers? You’re either stupid or suicidal.”

“Maybe a little of both,” Clarke mumbled into the floor, hating her life even more than usual.

“Join the club. Were you bitten?” The voice was unsympathetic, and Clarke shuddered internally to think of what the girl might do to her if she had been. She shuddered externally as well, at the idea of one of those things sinking their rotting, bacteria-covered teeth into her flesh. She thought she'd rather cut a limb off herself, honestly.

“No. No, I don't think so. What happens if th—they bite you?” Clarke wanted to pick her head up, but she found herself with an unfortunate lack of control in her body, and so she stayed where she was, face down on the floor, trying to regain control over all of her faculties in light of all the insane new information she was trying to absorb.

“Are you kidding? How the hell are you alive?” the girl was incredulous with disbelief, and frankly, Clarke knew exactly how she must feel.

"Your guess is as good as mine,” Clarke finally pulled herself up on a desk, and turned to face her rescuer. She intended to thank her, despite the low-key bullying that had accompanied the saving, but instead she looked at the girl and the world pitched and rippled violently around her. Bile rose in her throat, burning the back of her tongue as it threatened to spill forward, the atmosphere shrinking in on her til it was a crushing weight she could hardly bear.

Pinprick goosebumps spread across her skin and scorching tears filled her eyes rapidly. Her tongue malfunctioned. Time ran backwards and upside down. Down was up, up was down, backwards was front ways, front ways was sideways. The moon and sun switched places, and then Clarke became either very small or very large as compared to the universe.

Standing before her with pale skin and a dull sort of rage in her eyes, was the one person Clarke had been certain she would never, ever see again.

"Lexa?"

Her piercing bright green eyes locked fearlessly on Clarke's, her jaw clenched and her mouth pressed tightly closed, forming a thin line that bisected her full, plush lips. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail at the back of her head; flattering, but a jarring look compared to her normally gently flowing waves. She was thin and pale, almost anemic-looking, and there was dirt and blood smeared across her sharp jawline and high cheekbones.

But it was her; it was Lexa, absolutely. Dressed strangely, yes, and looking at Clarke the way she’d always looked at Titus—unpleasantly, with a mixture of weariness and quite a bit of self restraint.

Clarke couldn’t figure out what was wrong; how could anything be wrong now? It was _Lexa_ , and she was Clarke, and suddenly it seemed silly to be concerned about dead people bites—not when Lexa was _right there_ , within touching distance and every bit as real as Clarke herself now was.

“You’re hurt,” she murmured, suddenly distracted and reaching towards Lexa's head, where her tightly-bound hair was matted with fresh, flowing blood. Her fingertips brushed across the wound, and Lexa recoiled like her touch had severely injured and traumatized her skin.

“What are you _doing_?” Lexa snapped, a nervous rage lacing through her stunned disgust. Clarke’s sense of self fractured as she pulled her rejected hand back towards herself, shaking as her mind went mad and misplaced any files related to higher brain function. Most of her vocabulary was out the door, too; she could only communicate on the most basic level with herself—never mind with Lexa. No. Not Lexa. The girl with her face, the _Not-Lexa_ , who had been disgusted by Clarke’s touch. Offended by it, even.

_Disgust._

_Lexa._

_Clarke’s touch._

_Lexa’s blood._

**_Red_ ** _blood?_

_Yes. Red. Very red._

_Fingers coated; Lexa’s red, red blood._

_Lexa never had red blood._

**_It’s not Lexa._ **

Clarke stared at her hand, the smeared red fluid that now stained her fingers, and, not caring what this.. this _imposter_ thought of her, grabbed her arm. Not-Lexa twisted free quickly, but Clarke was able to run her hand over the injury. _Maybe it hadn’t been Lexa’s blood, maybe it was someone else’s that had_ —but no, Clarke’s skilled fingertips felt the relatively deep wound as they ghosted across scalp and hair.

“Great, another lunatic. I love being flypaper for freaks,” Not-Lexa muttered in aggravation. She slashed halfheartedly at Clarke’s unwelcome arm with a butterfly knife—a warning of further consequences for further violations of her personal space, it seemed.

Clarke hissed softly in surprise as the skin of her palm split open under the blade and her blood beaded to the surface of the superficial wound quickly. It was a strange sight, too, and a first since the day she separated from the Other Clarke. She sputtered and reeled helplessly, her mind twisting around itself in in the panic of her visceral reaction. It should have been impossible for the girl with the digital DNA and binary blood to have such a primal, instinctual reaction to the Un-Lexa; lacking both instincts and primal ancestry as she did.

It _should_ have been just as impossible as vomiting, or any other bodily function a virtual entity had no need or even means to perform. She found herself suddenly adding “resentful” and “pissed” to the list of things she was currently feeling (and after so long of feeling nothing at all, to boot.) and turning her hatred quickly inwards.

What sort of sick, self-flagellating, bullshit kind of punishment dream _was_ this, anyway?

Sure, she'd dreamt in the mindspace quite a bit. There wasn’t a whole lot else to do in there—but it had never felt this real, nor been this emotionally sickening. She didn't dream all of the same things the real Clarke did; some of it was just different, and some was downright new. Though she was technically just a _copy_ of a person, Clarke had very rapidly found herself becoming somewhat uncomfortably different from the Real Clarke, from the Clarke who had borne her.

The hairsbreadth of a splinter between their identities had started out so very small and superficial. She hadn’t even _noticed_ until it was suddenly and embarrassingly clear that Clarke and her copy had parted ways long ago as far as being one and the same. Real Clarke had eaten something from Diyoza’s crew, something new. Real Clarke had savored every last bite, even sneaking licks of her fingertips and—when she thought no one was looking—sneaking a bite from Madi’s plate. Madi, too, had enjoyed the naturally sweet tuber quite a bit.

Clarke 2.0, on the other hand, had spent most of the night with her first case of virtual nausea from the sensations of Madi eating the vile thing. Within an hour, when her misery had not eased in the slightest, she had firmly decided that it was an act of cruelty for a living being to be capable of feeling nausea, but burdened with no means of relieving it. She wondered if she would vomit in binary, sometimes; mostly the times where she felt a little crazy; times like now.

When she thought about it later, it would make sense that her blood would be black; Clarke had been a _natblida_ when she took the Flame—however tenuously and temporarily she’d fit the definition. In the moment, however, Clarke was stunned at the sight of her onyx blood. She hadn’t realized she _could_ bleed; much less that she was a backup of Clarke with Ontari’s stolen blood still running in her veins.

As Lexa/Not-Lexa grabbed the collar of Clarke’s shirt and began to pull her onto her feet, Clarke knew she must be going quite mad. Not-Lexa’s fingers were like acid burns on Clarke’s flesh, and she heaved and rocked violently, turned her head, and proceeded to vomit onto the face of the rotting wall. Not-Lexa grunted loudly in dismay and aggravation, turning her back just in time. Clarke’s stomach freely emptied itself of whatever could have possibly been in it, given that she’d never eaten in her life. She briefly wondered in her delirium if just maybe she _would_ —but no, Clarke did not, in fact, vomit in binary, as it turned out.

This meant several things; the first of which being that it wasn’t a dream, as she had begun to believe. It meant she was a whole new level of person—one with a body—in a whole new world that made absolutely no sense. It meant those people probably really were dead and trying to eat the living. It meant Clarke 2.0 was now just plain Clarke.

It meant she should have paid a lot more attention when an ‘herbally-enhanced’ Monty and Jasper had tried to explain Multiverse theory to the old, singular Clarke—who would’ve taken better notes, if she’d known there was going to be a _practical exam_ on it a few short years later, to be fair.

It meant that Clarke Griffin—formerly a digital copy of a real person—had very suddenly become very, very Real herself.


	2. What We Become

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke and Alicia escape from the school.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so thrilled there's such interest in this story. Thank you so much, and I assure you all, I have every intention of continuing to write it. I really found myself intrigued with this version of Clarke and what she has to offer in this world, so please stick around. Hope you're all doing as well as possible in these weird, scary times. peace & light.  
> be well, be kind, _ste yuj_.  
> ~ PG

_[The Rabbit] longed to become Real, to know what it felt like;_

_and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and_

_whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it_

_without these uncomfortable things happening to him._

\- Margery Williams, "The Velveteen Rabbit"

There wasn’t time to meander, or to sit and share their origin stories. When Clarke finally finished vomiting, she glanced to Not-Lexa’s back and mumbled, “Sorry.”

The brunette made a disgusted noise. “You finished?”

Clarke’s cheeks burned slightly. In a strange way, she was appreciative of the girl’s abrasive personality and surly glower, though. It made her look a little less like Lexa, given that the unpleasant expression was trained on Clarke. Lexa had never looked at her so judgmentally, with such anger and impatience, before. It was jarring, to say the least; but certainly it kept Clarke well-reminded that this girl wasn't Lexa.

No matter how much she _looked_ like Lexa—right down to the faint smattering of freckles across her upper cheeks and her narrow, rounded ski jump nose and the flattering shape of her faint hairline framing her strong jaw and expressive eyes. Clarke was willing to bet every mole and mark was exactly the same; so she would take her relief where and how she could. In this case, the girl's off-putting attitude was helping Clarke to regain some of her verbal skills, at least.

"Yeah,” was still all Clarke managed. “I’m good.”

“Finally. Let’s go, Goldilocks.”

Clarke’s chest tightened as she followed her over to the windows. “Clarke. I’m Clarke Griffin.”

Not-Lexa paused, her expression turning suddenly unreadable. "Alicia Clark. I mean, I'm Alicia Clark, Clarke."

"Cause this wasn't weird enough already," Clarke muttered under her breath.

The snippy brunette wasn’t amused, though, and she glared at Clarke as though she wanted to make that perfectly clear to her. Her lip twitched a little, and Clarke instinctively braced herself; Lexa’s chin and lips had often done the same thing, just before she cut someone right down to the quick. Usually before they even knew she was planning to do so—an action most often aimed at Titus and her Ambassadors, from what Clarke had seen, anyway.

"Lovely to meet you. I'm ready to run for our lives, if you're done hurling. I can wait, though, if you need another minute."

Ah, yes. That was probably the biggest difference right there: so far, Alicia Clark was kind of a raging bitch. Unfortunately, for the time being anyway, Clarke had been rendered almost entirely useless in a world she didn't understand yet. Bitch-flavored Lexa clone or not, Alicia was the only chance she had at surviving it. Also, it _was_ Lexa's face, and she didn't know how to walk away from that; combined with having a physical body for the first time, in a world where everyone wasn't just cannibals; they were _dead_ cannibals. 

Honestly, how functional could she _really_ be expected to be under the circumstances?

"Yeah, thanks." Clarke managed to bite her tongue and stepped up on the desk chair Alicia had pushed to the window of the locker room they'd dead-ended into.

Though, to be fair, she _had_ once called Lexa a bitch to her face--immediately after spitting in it--and she'd meant both the word and the action at the time, petty as it was. So maybe there was a slight, mild possibility that Alicia had other redeeming factors, too, besides saving Clarke's life and they were just very, _very_ , deeply buried.

"I'm curious, Clarke," Alicia said conversationally as she climbed out the window and joined her on the roof.

"What's that, Alicia?" Her face was flushed, Clarke supposed from the running and climbing, but it reminded her of Lexa's once-blushing cheeks; though they had obviously been that way for very different reasons.

"Do you always move that slow, or just during life or death situations?" Her voice was syrupy sweet, and it made Clarke's jaw clench tightly.

"To be fair, I was a little thrown by the fact that you look exactly like my.." Clarke faltered. She had started off intending to say something witty and cutting in return, but the words of her truth were tumbling from her lips before she even knew she was saying them. Now she found she wasn't sure how to finish; how the hell could she whittle Lexa down to one meager, insufficient little title?

_My girlfriend, my lover, my partner, my savior? My Commander, my Lexa, with the spirit of a goddess, the mind of a scholar and slyer than a fox; carved out into a physical temptation so delicious, so sinful, it could only have been the design of Satan himself._

Alicia paused then, her eyebrows softening almost imperceptibly from their former knitted state, and she seemed to be genuinely listening to Clarke.

"--um, person. My person, that I love," Clarke continued, with a lump in her throat. "That's.. not here anymore." She guessed, technically, that Lexa was _never_ actually here, in this world. Or wasn't here yet, maybe. Either way, the thought was painful enough to resist Clarke's efforts to push it away.

Alicia continued to stare at Clarke, but it was with a vague curiosity and measurement in her searching, studying gaze. Finally, her eyes still locked with Clarke's, she replied quietly, "I lost my person too. At the start of all this."

She looked strangely vulnerable in the moment, and the look on her face was uncomfortably familiar to Clarke, who swallowed hard before responding softly, but truthfully.

"I'm sorry."

"Me too," Alicia turned away, apparently done with her grief for the time being, and faced their next problem: getting off the roof, preferably without any injuries. Her eyes scanned their surroundings critically, dismissing the two nearest trees with a few quiet mutters about weak branches that Clarke didn't really need to hear.

"Short of doing a swan dive into that courtyard with all those dead people that want to eat us, I'm not seeing any way down and out of this educational hellscape."

Alicia smirked despite herself, and Clarke felt a stabbing sensation in her chest at the familiar curve of her lips and arch of her brow.

Suddenly, Alicia's face lit up.

"We don't go down. We go _through_ , back through the school!"

Clarke whipped her head around quickly. "What? You're even crazier than I am! The place is overrun with those.. those.. people."

"They're not people," Alicia bit off, her face twisting in disgust. "They haven't been for a long time. Whatever you think they are? They're not. Walkers are dangerous, and they're not people. If you don't know that by now, you're nothing but walker bait. They're just monsters.”

"People can be pretty monstrous, too," Clarke swallowed hard, thinking of Lincoln and the Reapers with an uncomfortable feeling in her stomach. But then again, someone couldn’t be alive and walking around when they were dragging their own entrails, so maybe Alicia was right. Or maybe whatever virus or bacteria had caused this just killed and reanimated people who weren’t treated quickly enough.

“Alicia.. Isn't there _anyone_ that's trying to treat this, or looking for a cure, or? I mean, is everyone just.. gone? Is there anyone left?"

Alicia paused with her back to Clarke as she rummaged through a cabinet. “The whole _world_ is gone. It has been for a long time. Four years. Where have you been?"

Clarke felt sick. Sure, she’d grown up—or rather, the Real Clarke had—believing the last living humans in existence were there on her very own space station. But she was small then, and the Ark had seemed huge—it seemed that the whole world had been restored. She’d been a dumb kid with no idea then. But the Grounders—they’d been a very developed society, and an organized one at that; with leadership and trade agreements. They’d cultivated land and raised animals for food.

This world appeared to be what her father had called ' _gutsball' -_ and for right now, at least, all Clarke knew of this world was that she and the woman with Lexa’s face might be the only people here _not_ stumbling around with half bodies and a taste for human flesh. She thought about being alone on an entire planet, and decided she had been luckier than anyone left alive on this one. It had been oppressively lonely before Madi, but it still seemed preferable over being bitten to death by reanimated corpses.

“Are you by yourself?” Clarke asked, ignoring her question and surprising herself with the soft tone she’d used; even someone with such a lousy disposition didn’t deserve to be completely alone in the world.

“Why?” Alicia turned quickly on her, holding up a knife that Clarke hadn’t even seen her pull out. “Who are you with? You’re one of _them_ , aren’t you? I knew it!" Alicia stood quickly, pressing the knife against Clarke’s throat before Clarke had blinked.

_Jesus_ , she thought. Alicia was every bit as fast with a blade as Lexa or Octavia was--and definitely at least twice as crazy. Clarke swallowed hard against the cool steel against her jugular.

“I’m not with anyone. I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“I don’t believe you. Are you here for Charlie? Cause you’d better hope _you_ find her first. My brother would still be alive if not for that little bitch. You will _not_ stop me from killing her when I find her," Alicia scowled, pressing the blade deeper into her throat, and Clarke felt her blood beginning to bubble through the faint seam it made in her tender skin.

Bittersweet irony at it’s finest: getting a physical body just to die in it less than an hour later. That figured. Bonus pain? In that moment, Alicia was the spitting image of Lexa; in voice, mannerism, and facial expression. Clarke's breath hitched in her throat at the uncanny resemblance, and she visibly quailed; an act which intensified the look of suspicion on Lexa's face.

“I don’t know who Charlie is, I swear it. I’m not even from here, I don’t—I’m alone, I’ve been alone for a long time.”

Clarke’s voice cracked on the second ‘alone’ unintentionally, and she felt tears welling quickly behind her eyes. She’d never said a more honest truth in her entire life. It was devastating, and physically sickened Clarke to admit it aloud; much less to another entity that already seemed to despise her even more than Becca had. She had always been alone.

Alicia was searching her eyes intently, and Clarke took a shaky breath that exited as a quiet, muffled sob as she stared back at Lexa’s face. She imagined her own expression wasn’t unlike it had been when it was she and Lexa in the same position, on opposite sides of a blade, and she felt the hot tears starting to overflow her lashes. She didn’t even care anymore. Alicia could kill her, or use her as bait, or simply abandon her there in a building full of the dead, and it wouldn’t matter.

However things worked, however she came to _be_ in the first place, and then came to be real, it was rapidly becoming clear to Clarke that her feelings for Lexa were and always _had_ been real. It didn’t matter if she never technically existed; her memories were still real, and she’d tried so hard to convince herself differently for so very long that she’d somehow blinded herself in the process.

It seemed like Alicia’s face was restoring her sight, though, and it made Clarke feel heavy, and worn, and sad enough to lay on the floor and quietly await death. Maybe it had been better thinking she had no claim to the Real Clarke’s pain, because she was suddenly feeling a lot of it, and all at once.

She’d loved Lexa; loved her still. She loved her with everything she was, and everything she had ever been, and god, but was it the most painful epiphany she’d ever had. The sudden acknowledgment of what she’d lost combined with being faced by Lexa’s twin was too much, and Clarke leaned forward, pressing her throat harder against Alicia’s blade, her wide blue eyes pleading as she did so.

“What are you doing?” Alicia gasped, pulling the knife back quickly. “Are you _crazy_?”

Her own eyes were wide now, too; almost frightened, it seemed. Lexa had only looked frightened once in her life, as Clarke held her and watched the life fade from her eyes. Lexa had ultimately been afraid to die, as every single living thing also ultimately was. Alicia, for all of her bravado, seemed comparatively afraid to kill; regardless of what she’d said about the person she sought, Charlie.

Clarke swallowed hard before answering her honestly. “Probably.”

Alicia glanced from her face to the knife in her hand, and shook her head emphatically; emotionally. “Please—“

She didn’t finish; didn’t have to. Clarke looked into Alicia’s fractured eyes and saw how shattered she already was, and Clarke quickly whispered, “I’m sorry.”

Alicia just swallowed thickly and gave her a short nod of acknowledgment. Her message was clear: Clarke was free to go off and die, if that’s what she wanted. Alicia wouldn’t play morality police, or give her a canned speech about giving up and how much this complete stranger must have to live for, even in this world. No, Alicia was straight-up begging Clarke simply to not involve her at all. Clarke found herself wondering what else and who else Alicia had lost besides her brother, that had seemingly turned her as darkly broken and complex as Clarke herself felt.

Clarke nodded just a little bit, and Alicia looked even more relieved than she’d anticipated when she stepped back. She really didn’t want to kill, that was clear, and Clarke knew the feeling all too well.

“You said we should go through the school?” Clarke asked, as though the entire debacle with the knife hadn’t happened at all, and Alicia looked even more relieved at that. “How do we get around the deadies we just ran from in there?”

Alicia gave her an apologetic, reluctant look. “You’re not gonna be happy about it.”

“I gave up on happiness a long time ago,” Clarke replied dismissively. It sounded dramatic, perhaps, but it was genuinely true, and so she left it at that.

"Me, too."

Alicia rolled her knife in her long, dextrous fingers idly for a moment before motioning for Clarke to follow her back in the window, and towards the sound of whatever walkers were left on the other side of the locker room door.

🧟♀️🧟♂️ ♾ 👱🏻♀️👩🏻

Clarke was in _hell_.

Forget everything else that had ever happened to her, everything she’d ever done or said or thought or felt in her entire life. Everything she’d ever witnessed, or, god help her, smelled before—none of it was even remotely comparable to this particular moment.

She gazed at Alicia unsurely over the prone body of the walker between them, and silently asked with her eyes if this was _really_ the only way.

“Sorry,” was all Alicia offered, though, before slicing open the gut of the walker.

Clarke had seen a lot of sick things when she’d been the Real Clarke; she’d dealt with injuries that ran the gamut from bruises and scrapes and once, a sprained ankle, that Madi had picked up running loose in the forest, all the way up to major surgery and sucking abdominal and chest wounds. She’d smelled necrotic tissue in septic patients like Jasper dozens of times, felt the oozing sticky sores that had covered Atom’s body so completely after the acid fog. She’d sewed her own leg back together after Madi’s bear trap, helped save Lincoln from the Red, and nursed half of The Hundred through the virus that made them bleed from every orifice they had— _every_ single one--while actively bleeding from every orifice herself.

Suffice to say, Clarke was used to the stark unpleasantness that was universal when it came to dealing with human bodies and their various fluids. And yet, Clarke had never before felt _nearly_ as sick as she did now; watching Alicia push her hands inside the corpse’s abdominal cavity and swirl the organs, coating her hands with the sickening mixture before wiping it on one of the drop cloths they'd scavenged from a supply closet. Clarke felt even sicker with the realization that she, too, would have to do the same thing.

“Live or die?” Alicia said pointedly, watching Clarke’s sickened face as she rubbed the walker’s bodily fluids on her cheeks with a grimace.

Clarke swallowed hard and followed Alicia’s example, tentatively dipping her hand between the exposed ribs. She gagged as she began to cover her drop cloth, and then her exposed face and arms as well. It made her feel only incrementally better when Alicia retched a few times as well. It proved Clarke was not exceedingly weak, and that Alicia was at least partially human.

“You’re sure this works?” Clarke asked dubiously, coating one arm and then the other.

“Mm. My brother Nick used to do it all the time. He used to say that he could walk with them, and nothing could kill him.” Alicia allowed a small, almost-smile to cross her lips, butt her face quickly grew stormy again. “At least he was right about the walker camo."

Clarke gave a dry heave as she began covering her face and exposed and unfortunately ample chest, her nose wrinkling at the unimaginable stench she, Alicia, and the mutilated corpse were giving off.

“Someone killed him, you said? Someone named Charlie? Why?”

Alicia paused, furrowing her brows at her and looking mildly dazed for a moment. Her face still looking somewhat stunned, she said quietly, “I—I don’t know. I don’t know why she did it. What.. what makes a kid kill people who cared about her?"

“A kid?” Clarke replied, an even sicker look on her face. Alicia nodded, suddenly extremely focused on the walker guts. “Are you really going to kill her if you find her?”

Alicia’s voice was gruff, her brows knit tightly together as she stood up, completely covered in entrails and blood, and Clarke had to admit that she certainly looked and smelled like a walking dead body—on the upside, maybe this disgusting idea had some merit to it after all.

“Yeah. I’m really gonna kill her. So you might want to scram after this, if you have a problem with that.”

Clarke did have a problem with it, truth be told. It was the same problem that she’d had with hanging Murphy, with handing Charlotte over. Sometimes there was no choice, and you had to take a life to protect or save another. Sometimes you had to kill, but the flip side was sometimes you _didn’t_ have to kill. You didn’t _have_ to kill everyone who crossed you; there were usually other ways to deal with them.

Especially with a child. Especially when Alicia couldn't even kill a perfect stranger..

“How old is she?”

Alicia looked mildly confused as she holstered her knife. “I dunno. Like 12 or 13, I guess. What does it matter?”

Clarke pictured Charlotte in her head, falling through the nearly endless air and into the rocky water so far below them. She pictured Madi, pale and ever so small on the exam table in Sanctum.

“I guess it doesn’t,” she replied quietly, deciding it didn’t matter in the moment, at least. Get out of the walker infested building first, _then_ worry about talking a perfect stranger out of the vengeful murder of a little kid who murdered someone the stranger loved.

“Good. Let’s go.”

🧟♀️🧟♂️ ♾ 👱🏻♀️👩🏻

Her name was Alicia Clark, and she was definitely afraid.

Golden-brown hair just a shade or two lighter than Lexa's, entrancing green eyes that nearly looked blue in lower lighting. That was strange to Clarke; Lexa's had always looked more hazel in poor contrast, so as minor a difference as it was, Clarke still added it to her mental list of things that made Lexa and Alicia different. It seemed pathetic, but reciting the growing list over and over again was the only thing steadying Clarke's jittering mind.

Alicia’s palm was sweaty and sticky against her own as they moved slowly through the school. Clarke couldn’t help it; every time they came close to walkers, she squeezed Alicia’s hand just a little bit tighter. Alicia didn’t seem to care, at least, and let Clarke continue to cling to her like a traumatized toddler as they crept devastatingly slowly through the crowded hallway.

The disgusting camouflage seemed to do the trick, though. A few walkers sniffed and investigated them curiously, but they seemed totally unaware that she and Alicia were among the living. It didn’t stop Clarke’s nerves from fraying themselves completely, though; she was still well and truly terrified, and couldn’t wait to be far away from the oppressing claustrophobia of the hallways filled with throngs of the dead.

Clarke had never been more terrified in her entire life; not even as the dropship rattled and forced her tensed body through space; hurtling through the atmosphere and towards what she'd anticipated being certain death, at the time. She hadn't been this fearful, even as she slid a knife carefully through Atom's throat to end his suffering, or when she'd slid another knife into Finn's chest to prevent his. Not when her dad had pulled reluctantly away from her for the last time and headed for the airlock against her will.

Not even as she'd stared into Lexa's eyes and watched the light in them dying out slowly; knowing it meant she was alone again, and this time it would be permanent.

The school was absolutely packed with walkers; it looked like the lion's share of the student body didn't make it past the early days of this particular world's armageddon. The winding labyrinth of a structure seemed to last forever as she and Alicia slowly, carefully eased their way through the thick throngs of walkers. Most of them were clustered around classrooms with other, equally attractive and attracted walkers clawing desperately behind their closed doors.

Clarke shook nervously as she followed Alicia's careful, deliberate steps across the distressed, decaying floor, and a thought briefly fluttered through her mind of Anya; all impatience and rage as she told Clarke so matter-of-factly that she 'reeked'.

Boy, Anya had really had no _idea_ , had she? Frankly, if Clarke had any less self control than she did, she'd have been vomiting in the corner just hearing the plan; never mind executing it. It was the worst stench she could possibly imagine encountering; and the Real Clarke’s memory of Mount Weather’s irradiated, pustule-covered corpses remained well and fully intact.

Clarke shuddered as they squeezed down a particularly narrow corridor, and found themselves having to practically hug the walkers to pass them. They gagged in silent unison as they squeezed face-to-face with a particularly gory specimen. Clarke heaved involuntarily as her face brushed across the bloody, exposed scapula of the large walker. Muscle and tendon dusted her face, and she bit down on her lips until they bled, forcing herself to swallow her own stomach contents back.

Alicia had paused, her eyes wide as she stared in horror at Clarke. Clearly, she hadn’t expected Clarke to successfully pull that off; she’d even released Clarke’s hand in anticipation of separating among the throngs of ravenous walkers that would rapidly fill the already claustrophobic area. Her face slowly morphed to relief, and then, as she saw a stringy patch of viscous skin dangling from Clarke’s forehead, disbelief.

Clarke reached back for Alicia’s hand, and when she took it once more, it was trembling. Alicia took her turn sliding past the walker, and she took it like a champ, Clarke thought. She shut her eyes, held her breath, rolled her lips between her teeth and clenched her jaw, sliding through slowly but steadily. She emerged on the other side of it and released her breath slowly, catching Clarke’s gaze with an adrenaline-fueled joy in her own. She actually smiled, and the memory of Lexa’s rare smiles cut through Clarke like so much razor wire.

The stray bit of viscera began to slide down her forehead, and Clarke let out a short, sharp exhale before Alicia’s hand clamped down tightly on her own, her nails digging in hard enough to break skin. Clarke swallowed her disgusted cry, forcing herself to focus on the fear in Lexa's face, and nothing more.

It didn't matter. The walker had heard it, and his dangling jaw quivered as he let out a hungry snarl and clawed at Clarke's hair.

"Great," Alicia muttered under her breath, yanking Clarke away. The bony digits remained stubbornly tangled in her golden strands, however, and Clarke yelped as her arm was slashed open on a locker door. Alicia and the walker played tug with Clarke for a frantic moment, as tears streamed sideways down her cheeks.

"Leave me," Clarke cried, trying to pull away from Alicia. She wouldn't be the cause of yet _another_ person's death; not if she could help it. Her mind flashed briefly to Lexa, caught in a doorway and injured, commanding Clarke to leave her behind for the _pauna_.

"No way," Alicia snapped. Before Clarke even realized it, Alicia had pulled out her gun again, and fired it straight into the walker's skull with a determined look on her face. A deafening roar filled Clarke’s ears as dozens of walkers began snarling and surging towards the source of the noise. They worked together and quickly freed Clarke from the destroyed walker’s grip, then took off running together.

The crowd of walkers surged around and against them as they pushed through the throng like NFL players, knocking walkers back left and right with their full weight, using the momentum of the walkers’ rotted bodies to slow the progress of the others.

“We’re never gonna make it,” Clarke gasped as they forced their way down the hallway. Alicia just pulled her along harder as they rounded a corner, spotting the front entrance of the school just ahead of them.

“You were saying?” Alicia sassed, shoving Clarke ahead, through the doorway and out of the school, before promptly slamming into Clarke’s back when she stopped dead in her tracks.

There was a massively imposing SWAT van directly in front of the school—and by extension them, with a line of high-powered machine gun barrels pointing right at her from inside. Her tongue went dry, and she felt Alicia trying to push her through the door; her arms deceptively—almost annoyingly—strong, just like—

“Get _down_!”

A voice commanded them from somewhere in the van, and Alicia obediently grabbed Clarke’s wrist and hit the deck, violently slamming Clarke into the ground next to her. For several seconds, rapid and loud gunfire rang out, and Clarke couldn’t help it; she slammed her hands over her ears, trying to block out the gunfire and the raspy growling.

Clarke Griffin, afraid? You bet your sweet _ass_ ; she was downright, full-on, quaking-in-her-boots, _terrified_.

When the barrage of shots had ceased, Clarke dared to lift her head; then kind of wished she hadn't. Alicia was staring at her in horror, her wide green eyes reflecting fear for the first time Clarke had seen, and it made her stomach turn over uncomfortably. Lexa had never looked that scared, even when she really should have. It was a jolting sight, so it took Clarke a moment to realize that she, herself, was the cause of it. She felt the soft telltale trickle on her face, streaming from her suddenly tender nose. She realized what had Alicia so shaken when she touched her fingertips to her face and saw the Nightblood coating her fingers.

The rasping, hungry groans were silent now, and Alicia continued to stare at Clarke's foreign blood, where another batch was streaming down her arm as another young woman joined them. She had short, brown hair with an attractive side shave, and quick hazel eyes that were laced with suspicion as she trained a pistol directly on Clarke's bloodied face.

"Alicia, are you okay?" she asked, not lowering her gaze or her gun. Clarke inexplicably felt somewhat foolish as she sat on the ground crying and bleeding black, just a few meters from the large mound of the already-dead, alive but dead again, dead people.

"Yeah, I'm f-fine," Alicia seemed to pull it together a little, her tone dismissive and annoyed as she stood up. Clarke stayed where she was; foolish or not, it would definitely be much more foolish to make any sudden moves with a gun inches from her temple.

“What the hell’s wrong with your blood?”

🧟♀️🧟♂️ ♾ 👱🏻♀️👩🏻

Her name was Alicia Clark—no ‘e’.

She’d been in high school when her world ended, making her roughly the same age as Clarke herself had been when her own world had ended. Her friend was Althea Szewczyk-Przygocki—Al, she’d said to call her. She was a journalist—was still one, to hear her speak about it.

They sat outside the SWAT van near the small camp fire they’d made, and ate some of Al’s large stockpile of noodles together in relative quiet; though Al kept eying Clarke in a way that made her feel like she was under a microscope.

“You’re really not making it up, are you?” Al said thoughtfully, watching her.

“What makes you say that?” Clarke asked, glancing up from the admittedly delicious lunch she was eating. Her memories of food had definitely not done justice—it tasted like she held heaven in her mouth, which was an odd contrast with the rancid stink she and Alicia were still emitting.

Al shrugged. “Nobody likes ramen _that_ much. Not even at the end of the world.”

Clarke glanced up and, seeing Al’s light smile, returned it. “Really? They taste amazing to me. I mean, it’s no panther jerky or, god, chocolate cake, but—“

Alicia looked up and gave an annoyed huff before she stood up. “Perimeter check.”

“I can go—“ Clarke started, but Alicia ignored them both as she walked away. Clarke let it go, and watched her quietly for a moment, searching her outline for any further differences from Lexa she could store away in her mind.

“She thinks I’m lying,” Clarke said softly instead, barely realizing she’d said it out loud. She realized that bothered her an awful lot, and she pushed that particular train of thought away.

“She thinks everyone is lying right now,” Al countered, poking at her own noodles. “Your story _is_ pretty unbelievable.”

“As much as dead people walking around?”

Al shrugged. “That’s why she’ll come around. She just needs some time, is all. And to find the rest of our people.”

“There’s more of you?” Clarke’s brows went up as she finished off her noodles.

“A few,” Al nodded, tossing another package of noodles to her. “Here. In honor of your first solid meal, and being the only person in this world to actually enjoy stale noodles”

Clarke couldn’t help smiling a little. “Good as they are, shouldn’t we save them? I’m guessing you guys don’t do a lot of grocery shopping these days.”

“Got a lifetime supply of those,” Al waved her off. “Eat. You need to build some strength anyway.. maybe some muscles, too, if you plan to stay alive here.”

Clarke studied her curiously. “You believe me. About being from.. somewhere else. Don’t you?”

“My brother Jesse was really into comic books and genre shows. I spent a lot of time getting schooled on multiverse theory. And I’ve heard weirder stories than yours, these days.”

Clarke raised an eyebrow as she opened the second package of noodles, picking at them dry and enjoying the light crunching sound they made in her teeth. Eating was really an underrated pleasure, she couldn’t help thinking to herself.

“You’ve heard weirder stories than being from another.. uh..”

“There’s dead people walking around eating the living. Weird is the new normal.” Al’s tone was light, teasing. Clarke felt herself relaxing despite herself, and she marveled briefly at Al’s talent, because of course setting Clarke at ease was deliberate. She was a _journalist_ , for goodness' sake.

“Fair point.” Clarke closed her mouth. Al continued to eye her, though, and suddenly Clarke realized why Al had gone so far out of her way to make her feel comfortable, to put her at ease and get her to relax.

“Go ahead, say what you wanna say,” Clarke said, raising her eyes to Al’s. To her relief, Al didn’t bother with the niceties and formalities. She got right to her point, which was a personality trait Clarke respected.

“I saved you, which kind of means you owe me now,” Al pointed out, drumming her fingertips on her thigh thoughtfully.

Clarke scoffed lightly with amusement. “I don’t even have a change of _underwear_ with me, much less anything to trade for my life.”

“There’s only one thing I want from you,” Al shook her head slowly, measuring Clarke visually as she did.

_Oh, this was sure to be interesting_ , Clarke thought. “What’s that?”

“The truth. All of it. On the record. On camera.”Al fixed her glittering hazel gaze on Clarke, her voice solemn.

“What’s your story, Clarke Griffin?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Non-Watcher's note: 
> 
> On FtWD, Al (Althea) collects people's stories on video with obscure-sounding titles for their interviews, and "What's your story?" is kind of her catchphrase regarding that.


	3. The Storm, Part One - What's Your Story?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A storm brews.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next were written as one chapter, but it wound up far longer than I expected. I broke it up simply to make it a more manageable length, but no significant time passes between this and The Storm, Part Two, and I am posting both chapters as one update.

_"Real isn't how you are made._ _It's a thing that happens to you._

 _It doesn't happen all at once._ _You become. It takes a long time._

 _That's why it doesn't happen often_ _to people who break easily,_

 _or have sharp edges,_ _or who_ _have to be carefully kept."_

\- The Skin Horse (Margery Williams), "The Velveteen Rabbit"

Clarke’s eyes had been on Al the entire time she spoke, gauging her for a reaction; particularly to the more unbelievable aspects of her life story. Throughout the tale, Alicia had huffed indignantly a time or two, and clearly thought Clarke was lying about her origins despite her tarry, onyx blood and scarred neck. Clarke actually liked the tiny raised line on the back of her neck quite a bit; it was the first thing that had ever truly belonged to _her_ , the first thing that she'd earned on her own. It marked her creation, her birth, so to speak.

_And_ , she thought childishly as she awkwardly finished up her interview, _it's an almost perfect copy of Lexa's scar._

“And now, I guess.. I’m stuck here. I mean, I don't have the slightest _clue_ how to get back to my world. But it doesn’t really feel that much like being stuck, which is.. kind of strange. But good, I think. I'm just grateful you're the first people I met. You're the kind of people I would have been friends with, if I.. had friends," she finished lamely. Her cheeks flushed and she trailed off when she realized how lonely and sad she must have sounded.

Throughout the interview, Alicia had kept coming in and out of the van, always glaring at her with mild disgust; an expression that tore painfully through Clarke's chest each time their eyes met. Now she trained it on Clarke once more, her lips curling a little bit as she huffed for the dozenth time.

"You really expect people to believe you? You're definitely either crazy, or this is some kind of a hustle to distract us for your people. You expect us to believe in another universe, in copies of people on mind drives, and immortality?"

"Oh, and let's not forget I supposedly look _exactly_ like your dead girlfriend--who is _also_ from a future time in a different universe. That's pretty fucking crazy, and trust me when I tell you: I'm an expert in what crazy looks like." Alicia took a defiant, purposeful bite of her food and chewed it slowly, her brow tightly drawn into an aggravated glare.

"I have no trouble believing that." Clarke fixed her with a cool, unaffected gaze as she took a slow, steadying breath, and then took the gamble. What did she have left to lose at this point, really?

"You've got a tiny mole on your upper lip. Almost invisible unless you're really looking for it."

Al leaned in quickly to inspect the lip in question, then raised a bemused eyebrow when Alicia turned slightly pink and scoffed in Clarke's direction.

"All that proves is you've got good eyesight."

Al turned back to Clarke again for a response, her head swiveling between them in a way that had become almost comical; like she was watching a tennis match. The little light on the side of the camera indicated that she was still filming, and Clarke almost felt guilty for what she was about to put on the record.

Almost.

"Birthmark. Back of your left thigh, a couple of inches below your ass."

Alicia dropped the cup, too stunned to notice she'd done so as her noodles splattered across the floor at her feet. Her eyes were wide with disbelief, her cheeks burning red with embarrassment. Al snickered behind the camcorder despite herself, then bit her lip in an attempt to regain control when Alicia shot her a dirty look.

_At least now I know for sure_ , Clarke couldn't help thinking with a very smug look on her face.

There it was, then. Every remarkably unpleasant inch of Alicia was—physically at least—a carbon copy of Lexa. For whatever reason, Clarke found she took some measure of comfort from having certainty about something; anything at all to soften the blow of this insane world even a little bit at this point, really. 

"I don't know how the hell she knew that, but it doesn't mean she's not lying," Alicia didn't sound quite so sure of herself anymore, though. Her voice wavered unsurely as she continued, "Come on, Al! Do you seriously believe that crazy shit?"

Al's voice was mildly strained as she struggled to keep her voice steady. "It's not crazy. My brother believed in the multiverse, and he had a PhD."

Alicia didn't seem swayed by that; rather, she looked even more pissed off than she already was—which hadn't exactly been a low bar to begin with. "Nick had an IQ of 155. Plenty of smart people are crazy."

"Maybe," Al's expression turned somber. "Or maybe you just don't want to believe in anyone again, Alicia."

"Maybe _you_ just don't want to believe your brother was sick. Just like you want to believe those interviews of yours matter, even though nobody will ever see them," Alicia snapped the accusation, her sharp tongue wielding the verbal sword as expertly as Lexa had wielded her Kali blades. It was uncomfortably obvious that the oratory cut had done its job, and Al had been wounded to a moderately severe degree by its razor thin edge.

Al regarded Alicia intensely for a moment, and her voice was incredibly quiet when she asked, "Do you have the birthmark, Alicia?"

Alicia just glared, then turned away without further response; but she had already made it perfectly clear what the answer to Al's question was. Clarke's gut tightened in sympathy for how she knew Al must be feeling as Alicia exited the van, violently slamming the heavy door closed behind herself.

Clarke shuddered unintentionally at the wave of claustrophobia that suddenly and unexpectedly overtook her. A new sensation, though entirely understandable. Old Clarke hadn't feared enclosure; rather, her phobia had grown over the years to be an _open_ door or window. In particular, ones of an appropriate size to lose a loved one through.

In this world, however, Clarke supposed it only made sense. She'd been kept in a cage for far longer than Other Clarke; an entire lifetime, technically. How could she _not_ have come to fear the particular and unique helplessness of confinement, when she'd been born in the Flame and known nothing else? How could she not now be taken prisoner in her own body as well, by the scorpion sting of panicked blood rushing through her? The terror that had accompanied the sight and sound of Alicia's aggravation as it reverberated off the metal interior of the SWAT vehicle?

Al's eyes flicked between the door and Clarke before she leaned over, opening the door a few inches.

"Wider?"

"That's good, thank you," Clarke sighed with relief, her shoulders relaxing once more. Whatever Alicia's particular life burdens were, she was more than a little grateful she'd run into Al, and she couldn't help it when her mind whispered a thought inside her head, that was so painful it momentarily knocked the wind out of her.

_Bellamy would have liked Al, too._

Al sat forward, her tone gently prodding. “Listen. I don't wanna assume anything. I don't know you, Clarke. But even if you did know how to get back to your world, it sounds to me like maybe you wouldn't want to."

Clarke shrugged uncomfortably, glancing away from her. Al’s penetrating, annoyingly wise gaze made her feel shaken; downright rattled that someone she didn’t even _know_ saw her so transparently. She found herself suddenly thankful that Alicia had left. It would’ve made the air in the truck far too stifling if she'd had to stare at Lexa’s face when she finally replied with her heart hanging heavy in her hollow chest.

“Maybe not. I mean.. why would I, right? There's no place for me there. Maybe there never was,” Clarke admitted, her face a mask of shame. ”That world already has a Clarke; my people do."

Al glanced to Clarke over the camera lens, lifting her shoulders just slightly, one eyebrow inclining towards the delicate arch where nose met brow.

"We don't. Maybe that’s the reason you’re here.” Al's eyes flicked briefly to the van’s window and outside, where Alicia was wrestling with a walker for far longer than she needed to; seemingly taunting herself, and it, and death. Apparently double-dog-daring the Grim Reaper to touch her _directly_.

"Maybe this world’s the one that needed a Clarke.”

“Too bad all it got was a slightly damaged backup copy of her,” Clarke mumbled quietly.

"You're not a copy," Al replied unexpectedly, giving her a serious but reassuring look. "Not in this world, anyway."

"Hmph," Clarke hummed distractedly. "So here, I'm unique, just like everyone else?"

Al just gazed at her for a minute, looking vaguely amused. "Wow. It's been a long time since things were dire enough for a canned 'Dad' joke to be appropriate, Clarke. Even in this world."

She was smiling, though, and Clarke found herself smiling back. Feeling suddenly brave and confident in the safety of the SWAT van, Clarke looked back out the window. Alicia, who was clearly having quite a bit of trouble unpacking some of her issues, was finally taking the well-tenderized walker down, and looked no worse for the wear. The walker had barely been able to lay a finger on her the entire time.

Still. Clarke was no fool; she knew a thing or two about crazy, too, and struggling with an enemy for longer than necessary was inherently crazy. The longer you taunted a foe for your own amusement or ego, the more likely they would have the time to recover and regain the upper hand on you.

_Haihefa Roan kom Azgedakru_ had learned that little lesson the hard way, when his cocky posturing had provided Lexa the necessary time to escape his blade. She'd taken him down quite easily after that, and though it had worked out for the better for him that time, Clarke had hoped in the future that the king would have better control over his ego.

But that was another life. Another story; one recorded forever now, on the small video tape Al was currently tucking away into its protective case. Clarke caught a glimpse of the title Al had scrawled on the label, and felt something in her chest tighten with emotion.

The spine of the tape said very simply, ' _The Commander'_.

"What about Alicia? What’s her story?" Clarke shook off the painful feelings and her upsetting reverie, and Al gave pause at the unexpected question.

“Well. I guess that depends how interested you are,” Al countered, giving her a knowing look before rummaging in her box. She pulled out another tape and tossed it to Clarke, who caught it easily.

Clarke looked at the small box in her hands, turning it to read the handwritten label. "Madison? Who is that?"

“Hm,” Al hummed, tucking her camera safely back into its bag. "I'm gonna go check on Alicia. Just noodles again for dinner tonight, sorry about that."

"Excellent," Clarke replied, allowing herself a small smile. She really did like the ramen, stale though it obviously was. She'd been secretly hoping to score one of the packages claiming to taste like shrimp. “Looking forward to it.”

“God, you really do like them, don’t you?” Clarke just shrugged a bit. “Yeah, you’re definitely from another world.”

👱🏻♀️ ♾ 👩🏻

“I’d take you to another world if I could,” Jake whispered into the star-spattered night sky, his strong arms holding the towheaded toddler safely between himself and Abby. Clarke wiggled her tiny body further up the bed, tucking her head against her mother’s chin. Her bright blue eyes reflected the tiny, dim sleeplights that let you navigate safely in the dark without disrupting the Circadian rhythms the Ark had been designed to so carefully balance.

“One with an endless supply of steak, and shrimp, and expensive wine..” Jake continued, his voice gently teasing. “Where we could go outside and look up at the stars anytime we wanted to, without a viewport. We’d eat all the best foods, drink all of the best drinks, and dance until sunrise on a sandy beach..”

Abby smiled at the picture Jake was painting, despite the fact that nobody had tasted steak or shrimp in several generations, and nobody ever would again. Cows and shrimp were long gone on the dead planet that floated mockingly outside the viewports. She tenderly smoothed back the flyaway strands of her only child’s hair with all the love she could put into the simple action. Clarke hummed contentedly, sticking her thumb in her mouth with a soft sigh as her mother and father pressed in tightly around her. This was when she felt the most secure, the most safe, and the most treasured. She floated contentedly in the brilliant light of her parents, her tiny four-year-old body filled to near-bursting with love, and safety, and happiness.

“I don’t need another world,” Abby whispered back. There was a soft, serene smile on her lips as they laid together amidst the stars. “I don’t want one. I already have everything I could ever want, or need, and it’s all in this world. Right here in this bed, as a matter of fact.”

Clarke hummed happily again, this time in sync with Jake as she tried to squirm even closer to them, though the only way to achieve that would be for her to curl up inside one of their chests—something she would have happily done, had she known how to.

“I almost for guilty for how happy we are, Abby,” Jake whispered, his eyes shamefully meeting hers over Clarke’s restless snuggling body. “How lucky we are. Especially when Thelonius just lost his—“

“Jake,” Abby whispered quickly, reaching to touch her fingertip to his lips, pausing him mid-sentence. “Not tonight. Please? Just.. be _here_ , be with us. Okay?”

Jake, despite the heavy weight in his heart, smiled at the woman he loved, and then down at the small child he loved just as much, if not more. The child who had somehow managed to take up nearly his entire heart the moment he’d seen her perfect, chubby little cheeks and startlingly bright blue eyes that never seemed to miss anything. At first glance, Jake had known he would chew his own limbs off and carry a mountaintop across the sky on his back if it meant sheltering the tiny life they'd created out of their love.

“I’m sorry, Abs,” he replied truthfully, reaching for her hand under the blanket. Clarke felt their fingers entwine as their hands came to rest together on the small of her back. “I just can’t stop thinking about it. I can't imagine what Thelonius must be going through. If I lost you, or if we lost Clarke..” He trailed off briefly, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t survive it.”

“Me either,” Abby whispered back with an emotional flutter in her throat at the thought. She briefly buried her nose in Clarke’s hair, inhaling the fresh, slightly sweet scent of her daughter’s head with a look of enamored bliss.

Jake watched his girls quietly for a moment, cupping each of their sleepy cheeks in turn before addressing Abby very quietly once more.

“If anything _ever_ happens to me, you just.. You let it happen, okay? Let it happen, whatever it is, and you keep Clarke and yourself safe no matter what. I know how you feel about.. certain laws, and how hard you’ve always wanted to fight them. But Abby..” Jake fixed her with a troubled look, his voice turning serious in a way that sent shivers up her spine. “You have to promise me you’ll keep going, and you’ll toe the line. That you’ll do whatever you need to do, to keep yourself and Clarke alive and safe. No matter what it is, or how much you might hate it.”

Abby’s voice was shaky when she responded with simply, “Jake..”

“I mean it,” he implored. “Abby, please promise me. Clarke is all that matters now.”

“I promise,” Abby quietly but very reluctantly replied. “No matter what, I’ll keep Clarke safe. But I won't have to, because nothing is going to happen. Not to any of us. The Griffin family will be just fine."

They stopped whispering then, and Clarke’s lips began to slacken around her thumb as sleep overtook the blonde toddler. Her small body rapidly grew limp there, wedged into the safest of places. A lovely candy-sweet dream, where she floated in a naive and blissful comfort that filled the space between her parents. She drifted off gently, dreaming of the imaginary world they’d painted inside her subconscious mind—one full of safety, and happiness. Where there were brilliant explosions of bright colors, and whispered words of love dusting gently across the pillow, caressing and coaxing Clarke into the innocent, uncomplicated dreams of a child blessed with the gift of loving parents.

👱🏻♀️ ♾ 👩🏻

“Noodles taste even better than I dreamed,” Clarke smiled at Al. “I can’t wait to try the shrimp-flavored ones. My mom always said it was one of the foods from the old world she wished she could try the most.”

“An entire universe without shrimp-flavored ramen,” Al paused, looking mildly bitter. "Great as that sounds, it just figures I would meet my first alien _after_ the world ends. You know what the networks would’ve paid me for this story? Especially followed by B-roll of you eating your first shrimp-flavored ramen,” Al shook her head a little as she carefully—and finally—began to put her camera away. "What a serious bummer.”

Clarke smirked understandingly. “Tell me about it. I’m on my second universe, and it’s _still_ the apocalypse."

Al laughed as she stood up, clipping her belts back into place. Clarke glanced out the window, where Alicia was still squatting over the prone, still body of the walker and staring at it, apparently in some deep level of a survival trance that Clarke was only all too familiar with herself.

“She comes off cold as ice, but she’s not. She's just been through a lot, some of it very recently. There's wounds that are still bleeding; just give her time to lick them. She'll warm up to you,” Al advised gently, pausing on her way out of the van. “She’s worth the investment, Walker Bait.”

"God," Clarke groaned quietly, suddenly regretting telling Al of Alicia's accusation back at the school. "That nickname's not going anywhere, is it?"

“I wouldn’t hold your breath on it, no," Al responded good-naturedly.

Clarke gazed back at Al and nodded a little. “Thanks, Al. For—for saving me, feeding me.." Clarke paused briefly. "For believing me. Just—for everything, really.”

“I would say don't make me regret it," Al replied, tucking a few strands of her unruly hair behind her ear and shouldering her camera bag. "But I really don't think you're going to."

"I won't," Clarke responded firmly, her bright, clear gaze locked on Al's meaningfully.

"Hope not," Al smiled just a little as she tugged her bra strap out of her collar and clipped her key to it, tucking it carefully back under her clothing and squinting at her a bit. "Also, I'm a very light sleeper. So don’t even think about trying to take off in my van tonight,” Al continued, squinting at her a bit.

Clarke threw her hands up in the air. “Like I’d know where to go, even if you left it running with a map on the dashboard?"

Al shrugged. “You could still just be a crazy person with a really weird blood condition and a natural talent for lying. I’m not ready to trust you _that_ much yet.”

“What will it take?” Clarke searched Al’s face, but she merely shrugged again.

“Time. Alicia, too. Longer for her, probably."

Al paused, watching as Alicia pushed herself up and walked away from the wasted walker, still seemingly lost in some sort of disaffected, otherworldly trance. "No fast forward to being _friends_ , right?”

"Right," Clarke answered quietly, glancing up as Al stopped again in the doorway, her eyes flicking towards a slightly dazed Alicia with concern. She tried not to let it stick in her mind that Al had over-emphasized the word 'friends' so deliberately; and though the message written between the lines was incredibly clear, Clarke was far too emotionally exhausted by then to do anything more than turn slightly pink at the implications Al was making.

She really did like Al quite a bit already, despite her increasingly annoying penchant for noticing things Clarke would frankly rather she didn't. For whatever the reason might be, Al saw right through her from the get-go, and Clarke couldn't help but to feel exposed, and vulnerable, and yes, even a bit threatened by it; by Al's keen eyes and sharp tongue, and by the very _idea_ of herself and Alicia.

Just because she looked like Lexa didn't mean a single damn thing, Clarke reassured herself. Her attraction to the lost, damaged girl was perfectly normal, and reasonable, and rational; not to mention completely superficial and, ultimately, meaningless. Of all people, Clarke Griffin knew better than most how little one's physical form truly mattered compared to one's.. essence? Spirit? Soul? They all sounded equally cheesy and wrong. It didn't mean she was attracted to Alicia; it only meant that Lexa's particular face was still and always would be the most beautiful one she'd ever seen.

Clarke briefly worried that the entire exercise had been simply to test her; then suddenly found herself concerned that, for one reason or another, Al had found her wanting. Mentally, she braced herself for it, but Al merely glanced back to watch Alicia enterthe house they planned to spend the night in. The sky began to rumble loudly, and lightning sliced across the darkened clouds as few angry raindrops began to violently ping off the walls and windows of the vehicle.

"She's worth it," was all Al said, in a quiet, meaningful voice, her eyes meeting Clarke's one more time. With that, she left, leaving the van doors open just enough to allow Clarke a sense of privacy, without making her feel trapped. Clarke, meanwhile, found herself still stuck on the word friend, only now it made her feel smaller and more pathetic than before.

Clarke had never actually had a friend before; had never _been_ one either. Her entire existence, there had been only Becca and memories that weren’t entirely her own. And Becca? Becca had been and likely still was many things, but Clarke's friend was definitely not one of them.

Truthfully, Clarke had felt like little more than Becca's slightly wayward pet, if she was completely honest with herself about it. Part of her more than uncomfortably aware that Becca had likely taken great pleasure from having Clarke Griffin trapped firmly under the press of her thumb.

For hell’s sake, Clarke had never even _met_ someone before—and that made her think briefly of Jordan, and the naivety that had been inherent and expected after the solitary, sheltered life he had experienced. Then she thought of Monty and Harper with a sharp pain in her chest. She thought of Bellamy, and of her mother and father. She thought of Raven and Octavia, of Jackson and Echo; of Miller and Murphy and Emori. Niylah, Indra, Kane, . She thought about Lexa, and about Madi, and then she felt like she might vomit; but before the anxiety could fill her chest past breathing once again, something else occurred to her. Something that seemed blindingly obvious now that she'd thought of it, but was still a jarring shock to realize. 

She wasn’t merely the Real Clarke in this world; she was the _only_ Clarke in this world. And she had been lucky enough to find herself among kind—if not slightly damaged—people.

_But who the hell isn’t damaged, anyway?_ she thought.

These were people that could become a home for her, and she could become whatever she wanted for herself and for them. At least, if she could learn to control the pain that arced across her chest every time she saw Alicia wearing Lexa's face, anyway; if she could reign in the feelings of homesickness for a home that was never actually hers. If she could prevent her guilt and her grief from gutting her _completely_ beyond functionality.

This was perhaps a gift, then; a strange one offered to her from the universe, from the Powers That Be, or maybe even from the stars. It wasn’t even a second chance, or a chance to remake her life. This was a chance to _make_ a life, for the first time. This was the freedom to find out who Clarke Griffin was; to find herself in a world that was nothing but question marks waiting to be uncovered and people who didn’t know who or what she was yet, either.

Clarke Griffin was Real now, and her birth had been every bit as painful as any other. But the labor pains were over, and she had staggered from the fiery afterbirth, scarred and shaken, broken and bleeding. Her raw, new skin tingled; itching from the ache of its first stretch across her new body.

As Clarke climbed from the SWAT van with a deliriously determined look on her face, her skin still blistering with the heat of her creation, she gazed up at the raging grey sky. Al called out to her from the doorway of the house as the clouds shattered apart. Jagged, bright flashes sliced through the dark heavens as the swirling storm dumped a deluge of freezing rain directly overhead.

Clarke remained where she stood, spreading her arms as wide as possible; feeling more Real than she'd ever imagined possible.

She tilted her chin defiantly towards the atmosphere, fearing nothing. The sky continued to slam her with an ocean’s worth of rain and small pellets of hail, and wide blue eyes opened even wider while coral lips parted in the onslaught. With the mirth of a songbird unexpectedly freed from a lifelong captivity, Clarke Abigail Griffin—the Only Clarke there was now—threw her head back and began to laugh at the fickle sky above.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued in "The Storm: Part Two"..


	4. The Storm, Part Two - (not so) Carefully Kept

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The storm arrives.

_Of what use was it to be_ _loved_ _and_

_lose_ _one's beauty_ _and become Real_

_if it all ended like this?_

_And a tear, a real tear,_

_t_ _rickled down_ _his_ _little_ _shabby_

_velvet nose and fell to the ground._

\- Margery Williams, "The Velveteen Rabbit"

Al stood, holding the door and watching the entirety of Clarke’s odd little display with a dismayed look on her face. Beside her, Alicia leaned against the doorframe with her arms crossed, watching as Clarke continued to laugh into the torrential downpour.

“See? She’s crazy,” Alicia offered helpfully, straightening up and meeting Al’s gaze. “I tried to tell you she was crazy.”

She walked back inside the house and picked up the hammer before returning to her fortification mission, and Al couldn’t help wondering if Alicia was right. Maybe she just wanted to believe the blonde because she wanted to believe her brother. Maybe he was crazy, and Clarke was, too. Maybe she was, for believing either one of them. Maybe she was lying to herself, and she wasn’t as good at reading people as she’d thought.

But as she continued to watch Clarke, who was twirling slowly with a small, serene smile on her face in the downpour, Al’s brow furrowed and she grew even more certain she knew what she knew. Clarke had unpacked a lot in that truck, and there was no faking that; or the overwhelming relief on her face now as she finally headed for the porch with a small, blissful smile curving her lips. There was no faking the subtle glow that accompanied a psychological breakthrough, either. Clarke was broken, sure. Physically weak, and ignorant about this unfamiliar world; but Al knew liars, and Clarke wasn’t one.

“She’s not lying about this. I’d stake my life on it,” Al finally replied, just before Clarke jogged up the porch steps into earshot and grabbed another hammer from the table Alicia dumped them on.

“We’re about to be trapped in a boarded-up house by a hurricane. We’re both staking our lives on it,” Alicia responded as Al shut the front door and began nailing it shut.

Clarke, who had already left a significant puddle on the floor, paused in her own hammering to look at the brunette. “You don’t have to believe me, Alicia. Just believe I’m not here to hurt anybody."

“Nobody ever lies about that,” Alicia scoffed, tossing her hammer onto an end table. It landed loudly and with all the certainty of Clarke's guilt that her voice had been lacking.

The tense moment was suddenly shattered by a walker crashing through the window they had begun to nail shut. Shards of glass sliced through the air surrounding Clarke and Al as they hit the floor, tangled with each other and the walker. Icy wind and water rained down on them, sharp bits of hail and glass shredding Clarke’s skin as she struggled to free herself from under the massive weight of the obese walker.

Alicia ran towards the fray and quickly dispatched the walker just as two more made their way awkwardly through the window.

“The storm is driving them this way!” Alicia called over the deafening thunder and growling.

"We need to get—“

"Guys?" Clarke's oddly calm voice interrupted whatever plan Al had begun to formulate. Alicia shoved the second walker's body off herself and stood, looking out the window as well.

"It's a herd," Clarke whispered, more to herself than anything. "Couple dozen of them, at least." She turned her troubled gaze to the other girls, her voice breaking slightly. "They're close."

The former was an unnecessary addition; they could all hear the approaching walkers growing louder, even in the storm. The wind was picking up speed, and it was strong enough to pelt the rain so hard against their skin it felt like hundreds of needles jabbing and pinching.

"Basement," Alicia called, already taking off for the door in the kitchen. Al and Clarke were right behind her as the first of the walkers dragged its rotten, emaciated body onto the porch, scraping against the wooden steps.Al caught sight of another walker as it flipped end-over-tea-kettle through the broken window and began crawling towards them, with several more falling through the window behind him already.

"Al," Clarke had stopped on the first step down, with Alicia only two steps down from her. "Come on. We can barricade th—"

Al just smiled. "I'll be okay. I've got nine lives, like a cat. Get her out," she gave this order while looking straight at Clarke, who had a sudden sinking feeling in her gut as she realized what was about to happen. Knowing she couldn't stop it, and that she would have done the same thing, she gave Al a short nod of understanding.By the time Alicia realized what she was doing as well, it was too late. Al slammed the basement door, and the deadbolt sliding into place on the other side sounded just before Alicia's horrified cry. She pushed past Clarke to uselessly pound and scream at the incredibly heavy and now very locked door.

"Alicia! Alicia, please, we need to go," she implored with tears running down her cheeks, holding her arm tightly and trying to tug her down the stairs.

Alicia whirled on her angrily, tearing her arm from Clarke's grasp and sneering, "Get off me!"

She pushed past her once more and pounded quickly down the stairs with Clarke in hot pursuit.

Just about halfway down the staircase, something in the house gave a great heave, and the semi-rotted wood beneath Alicia's foot gave way. The entire lower half of the steps fell apart all at once, collapsing into the flooded basement.Clarke, Alicia, and the debris from the stairs tumbled into a foot of floodwater that was rising very quickly. Clarke coughed and sputtered as she began to crawl and pick her way free from the rubble. Above, the ceiling was creaking and groaning loudly enough to be heard over the raging hurricane, herd of walkers, and the impressively long string of curses coming from Alicia's mouth as she tried to wriggle free of the debris.

Had it been less of a dire situation, it might have been comical when in perfect synchronicity, Alicia and Clarke slowly raised their eyes to the ceiling above just as something gave a deep, shuddering, enraged crack. It was like a spaceship breaking the atmosphere, like the sonic boom of a wrecking ball that hit just as the house gave up its fight.Together, they dove under the remaining upper half of the basement steps just as the living room caved in on them: furniture, beams, and all. The world was only wood, and plaster dust, and broken pipes that were already significantly raising the water level in the cellar. Not to mention the several walker bits floating and bobbing around.

Clarke struggled to free her arm from where the coffee table and half a bookshelf had landed on it. An impressive amount of her own blood now coated her arm, and she gave a short, sharp cry as she saw managed to free herself, slicing the wound open even further. She quickly clamped her hand down on the gash, holding it as tightly as possible as she looked around in a panic.

"Alicia? Alicia!" she cried out, her heart thumping in her ears. " _Alicia_!"

"Here.."

Clarke quickly whirled in the direction of the weak response, and began wading through the hip-deep water and several small mountains of rubble to the other side of the staircase.

Alicia's face was tensed and crumpled in pain, and she made no attempt to move towards Clarke. There was a deep wound already bruising across her forehead, and a slick of blood was streaming down the side of her face. Clarke quickly cupped her cheeks, looking into her pupils and using the calmest healer voice she could manage under the circumstances, despite how pale and limp she looked.

"Hey. Hey, Alicia, look at me, okay? Follow my finger. Alicia?" But Alicia couldn't seem to focus her half-closed eyes, and Clarke swallowed against the growing lump of panic in her throat as she ran her hands quickly over Alicia's head and upper torso, searching for any other wounds; but the alarming gash seemed to be the worst of it. At least she was still conscious, though her pupils were worryingly slow to respond, which even a layman knew wasn't a good sign.

The water slapped against Clarke's stomach as the growing chaos raged within the storm, driving debris against both of them roughly with every wind-induced wave. The walkers were barely a threat in the roiling miniature sea at least; contained as they were by fallen shelves and chairs, respectively.

"Alicia? Hey, Alicia, can you move your feet for me?"

"Hm, are you asking me to dance?" she asked with a weak, breathy chuckle. "Can't, I'm stuck.."

_Stuck_?

Clarke immediately took a deep breath and dropped under the surface of the water. She quickly felt her way further down Alicia's weak, shivering body until she located the problem. Alicia's leg was bent at a strange angle, pulled taut and trapped beneath a broken beam from the first floor's collapse. The beam was easily nine feet across if it was an inch, and Clarke was filled with a sinking sensation deep in her gut as she wrapped her arms around the support beam and began pulling. She pulled until her face was purple and her muscles threatened to buckle under the stress as she let out a strained scream of frustration and put everything she had behind it.

The damned beam didn't so much as budge in the slightest. Clarke returned to the surface, taking a huge gasp of air as she bobbed in the churning, stormy water, which was continuing to rapidly rise. The panic pattered out a drumline inside her chest as she immediately dove under again, struggling against the beam with an icy cold realization forcing its way through her mind.

It was just too heavy; she was never going to get it off Alicia like this. Not before they both drowned, anyway.

She broke the surface again, coughing several times and spitting mouthfuls of water in between. Alicia strained as well, trying to pull her leg free to no avail as Clarke dove yet again. This time, she caught sight of an axe trapped between several pieces of a nearby shelving unit that had fallen apart, and she took off beneath the water towards it without bothering to fill her lungs again.

Above the rising tide, Alicia watched the blonde swimming further away under the surface, and closed her eyes as they involuntarily welled. She didn’t hold it against Clarke, really. There wasn’t time, and even if she could get free, it wasn’t going to happen before they risked drowning.She hoped Clarke at least intended to find and help Al; that she wasn’t running away just to save her own ass. But there certainly seemed to be more people in the world that valued their own ass above the ass of others. If Clarke was the type of person to save her own skin by leaving both Al and herself for dead, well.. That just meant she was made for this world, Alicia supposed; and she couldn’t find it in herself to be too upset about it. She pushed away all thoughts of the blonde girl, and readied herself to see everyone she had lost, smiling a bit deliriously as she pictured their smiling faces waiting for her. She felt an odd sort of calm spreading throughout her body as she let go and floated away, and away, and away…

🧟🧟 ♾ 👱🏻👩🏻

Her name was Alicia Clark, and she was going to die.

She was ghostly pale and shivering violently, her lips purple even in the dim shadowy light leaking through the sole window. Her teeth chattered as Clarke surfaced once more, gasping in several deep breaths as her cheeks faded to a slightly lighter shade of blue. Her pale eyes were panicked and fearful as she bobbed on the surface. Alicia just looked at her with resignation behind her welling eyes and an apologetic smile that hurt far more than any of her verbal abuse earlier had.

“It’s okay, Clarke. Go find Al, you can still save her,” she said quietly, nodding towards the fractured ceiling above the rising water.

“Shut up, Alicia. I am _not_ leaving you here,” Clarke told her firmly, sounding more annoyed than anything else.Before Alicia could reply, Clarke had already taken a deep breath and disappeared into the murky depths once more. She grabbed Alicia’s free ankle and guided her leg around herself, quite effectively using Alicia’s muscular calf as a sort of anchor to hold herself in place under the violently churning waves.

With two free hands and a mind being partially drawn to some very inappropriate places despite their increasingly dire circumstances, Clarke braced her lower body against Alicia's rigid leg and gave the handle of the axe a yank with every bit of strength she could muster. With a sudden rough jolt, the axe came free in Clarke’s hands as she was slammed back into Alicia by the force of its release. Alicia’s leg instinctively wrapped tighter around Clarke’s hips, placing them briefly in a fairly intimate position.

Thankfully, it didn’t last long. Clarke used the momentum to swing herself to the surface once more, holding the axe in the air triumphantly. The choppy water lapped against Alicia’s neck just below her stunned face. Her eyes widened when she saw what Clarke had, and the hint of embarrassment that had been on her face—ostensibly at their unintentional intimacy just moments ago, or maybe for thinking Clarke was leaving her after all—disappeared just as quickly as it flooded instead with relief.

Clarke wasted no time even meeting her gaze, however. Holding the axe in front of her as a sort of incredibly dangerous kickboard, she quickly swam back towards the basement steps. Alicia watched as Clarke stood on a step less than halfway up and took aim at the massive beam. With a determined shout, Clarke brought the axe down with all her might. Focusing on the deep vee-shaped strike, she aimed her second swing at it, splitting the old wood a bit less than a quarter way down its center.

“Clarke!” Alicia cried out, her words half muffled by the water beginning to lap its way across and over her face.

The raging floodwaters swallowed the last inch of her, and it gave Clarke an even deeper stabbing pain in the pit of her stomach. Alicia had sounded absolutely _terrified_ as she’d been sucked beneath the surface, and Clarke couldn’t blame her at all. She let out a deafening shout of fear and frustration as she brought the axe down again and again and again. She swung until her arms ached and her muscles and tendons were screaming, and finally the damnably massive beam splintered and cracked apart. The separated pieces splashed violently into the water, setting off a powerful tidal wave across the destroyed basement.

The beam was gone, which should have freed her; but Alicia was nowhere to be seen. And still nowhere. And still, and still..

“Alicia!” Clarke’s panicked scream echoed off the cement walls as she fought her way back through the water where she'd last seen the brunette.There was less than six inches worth of air left in the ruined basement, and Alicia wasn’t appearing anywhere in it. Clarke dropped the axe and dove beneath the surface again quickly, heading back towards where Alicia was still floating helplessly in the makeshift aquarium, unconscious.

She looked strangely serene in the calm waters beneath the surface, her hair floating in a halo around her peaceful expression. Clarke climbed down her limp body and saw the problem immediately. Beneath the beam, a large chunk of cement had also been crushing Alicia’s foot, and she probably hadn’t even known it. Clarke felt like her chest was going to burst as her lungs voraciously protested against the oppressive lack of oxygen in them; but she knew if she didn’t free Alicia now, she wasn’t going to be able to save her at all.

Unable to get an ideal angle, Clarke just pulled and pulled at the oversized chunk of rock, feeling her nails and fingertips shredding apart, bleeding as proof of her desperation. Her chest felt like it was ripping apart just the same, the searing burn making her aware her lungs were ready to give up, with or without her permission.It took far too long before the rock gave, tumbling away and freeing Alicia from her would-be watery grave. Clarke forced her body to the surface and took several deep, greedy, gasping breaths, her lips pressed to the ceiling.

Careful to hold Alicia’s rag-dolling head so her mouth and nose were as far above the water as possible, Clarke guided them back to the steps slowly, all of her muscles screaming in protest. She felt around until her fingertips wrapped around the axe handle once more.Pulling Alicia along behind her, Clarke swam back across the basement as the last inch of space was swallowed by the icy waves. Clarke aimed the axe head at the lone window under the water, and with as much force as she could gather underwater, she slammed it against the thick window. It rattled violently and groaned a few cracking sounds, but didn’t break.

Cursing internally, she reluctantly let go of Alicia for a moment. Uncomfortably aware of exactly how long someone could go without breathing and still live to tell the tale, Clarke used both hands and thrust the axehead into the glass harder, feeling the internal fractures begin to spiderweb. She hit it once and then twice more, and the window finally gave in and shattered, sending a wave of the basement’s rainwater rolling across the muddy, flooded yard. It dropped the basement’s water level enough to give them back a foot or so of breathable air, which Clarke gulped in greedily as she pulled Alicia up to the surface again.

Taking aim at the window frame, she attacked it one last time, clearing most of the glass from it. She grabbed Alicia’s prone body and unceremoniously pushed her out through the window first. What she lacked in strength and momentum, several inches of accumulated flooding outside and the buoyancy of the human body more than made up for. Thankfully, Clarke had only a marginal amount of difficulty floating Alicia's limp body through the ground-level window to freedom. 

Clarke let out a strangled hiss as a shard of window glass still lodged in the frame caught her, slicing her thigh open painfully before she managed to free herself. Bloody, bruised, and breathless, Clarke pulled her desperate body by her aching arms out into the flooded, muddy ground. She shimmied herself free from the window, and wasting little time, she pushed herself up and tilted Alicia’s chin towards the sky. She was a lot more shaken by the sight of Alicia’s limp, lifeless body than she could admit even to herself as she began chest compressions.

The rain that continued to pound them mercilessly hid the tears that were streaming down Clarke’s cheeks as she tried desperately to breathe life back into Lexa—no, _Alicia’s—_ unmoving chest. The herd of walkers had seemingly disappeared, either blown off course in the hurricane winds, or perhaps led off course by the also-absent Al. But she couldn't worry about Al yet; only hope the journalist really did have nine lives and would find them again. Both of them, Clarke told herself. Al would find both herself and Alicia alive, even though Alicia still wasn't breathing.

“Don’t you dare do this to me, _god damn you_!” Clarke screamed at Alicia's unconscious form through the relentlessly pounding rain. She felt her stomach twist up tightly inside her gut as one of Alicia’s ribs released a sickening crack from deep within her chest. She ignored it, pinching Alicia’s nose shut and breathing into her stubborn, _stupid_ lungs for her.

Clarke thought of Lexa stubbornly bleeding despite her best efforts to staunch it; of Lincoln feral and snarling; seemingly lost forever as Octavia was physically choked by her own grief. She thought of Murphy, looking paler and smaller than she'd ever imagined possible, as he lay limp and lifeless on the Sanctum ground before her. She hadn't been able to save him then, and it had nearly destroyed her. She hadn't been able to save her mother, or her father. She'd saved Jasper just to lose him again. Saved her people's lives at the cost of Lexa's.She _had_ let Lexa die, after all. Hadn't she?

_The great Wanheda, Commander of Death_ , Becca's voice taunted her inside her head. _More like the Harbinger of Death, don't you think? Jasper certainly did. Murphy and Bellamy and Raven still do. You decide who lives and who dies. That's the hardest part of being the leader, isn't it, Clarke? Making decisions for people, even ones you've never met. Putting names on a list. To lead the human race, is to ensure the survival of the human race. You've always done what you had to do. Leaders don't get to happily retire with their girlfriend to a quiet sandy beach._

_I never wanted to lead,_ Clarke thought back angrily. _I just wanted my people to be alive and safe._

_They_ ** _are_** _safe now that you're gone,_ Becca hissed. _Don't pretend there isn't a pecking order to your priorities, Clarke. Your loyalty is a fairweather game, and everyone knows it. Even I sometimes have trouble telling which side you're on. You sacrificed Finn for the Grounders, then sacrificed TonDC to keep Bellamy safe. Fast forward to a few short years later, and you were all too happy to trade Bellamy's life for Madi's. We both know loyalty in the long term isn't exactly your strong suit, Clarke._

There it was, plain as words on a screen; the full spectrum of what Clarke Griffin was capable of. Failure, betrayal, selfishness. Turning her back on her own people; people who had once trusted her to keep them safe.Maybe Bellamy had been right; maybe people did die when she was around. Maybe Murphy had been right, too, and she was, in fact, the bad guy. Maybe the hallucinations of her mother had also been right, and Clarke was the toxin.Alicia's ghostly pale form certainly seemed to support the theory. 

Clarke's memory flashed from death to death, from sin to sin, from mistake to mistake as she gave everything she had left in her exhausted, bruised and bloody body. She wouldn't stop breathing for Alicia, no matter how long it took. She wouldn't quit, or give up, or leave. She couldn't-- _wouldn't--_ lose anyone else. She wouldn't be responsible for letting Alicia die, too.

Clarke was more sure of herself and her path than ever before. She would remain there, bloody and crying on her knees in the small river that was forming around them as the floodwaters enthusiastically sought lower ground. She would breathe for Alicia until she had no breath left to give. Until her muscles screamed, until anemia and hypothermia kicked in, until her arms buckled and the delicate body she'd been given finally broke down.

If necessary, she would maintain her efforts until they both died right there in the swampy yard together, the wild swirl of the chaotic hurricane continuing to explode around them. It seemed a better alternative than going off on her own and having to live with the guilt until she got herself eaten, at any rate. The lightning flashed wildly, like a disco ball spinning out of control as Clarke ignored everything but her mission to wake Alicia up.

It had to have been at least an eternity or two before the thick, soggy, sputtering sound of a wet choke slid from Alicia’s throat, and Clarke quickly rolled the girl onto her side, crying out with disbelief. Alicia coughed and vomited repeatedly into the mud, groaning and clutching her now-fractured rib in pain as she did so. Clarke’s hand lingered unconsciously on her back, instinctively rubbing light, soothing circles into it as she got sick a half dozen more times. She let out a weak groan as she exhaustedly flopped onto her back, groggily squinting at the blonde through the rain that still pounded them mercilessly.

“Thanks, Mom,” Alicia mumbled deliriously as she passed out once more.Clarke let out a single, tearful sob of relief as her exhausted, aching body finally collapsed into the soaked, muddy ground beside Alicia, and unconsciousness overtook her as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your comments, kudos, and bookmarks - y'all are a writer's dream come true, and I am so, so appreciative of the support! My pupils have actually taken on the shape of hearts for y'all. 😍 Even though I am terrible about responding to comments, simply because of my limited spoon availability*, I do read them (eventually!) and it's always a huge emotional boost. Thank you, thank you, _mochof_ , you're all just amazing. ❤️
> 
> Have a healthy, safe, happy, and Covid-free weekend! #StayHome if you can; wear a mask, wash often, & always six feet apart if you can't.  
> Be well, be kind, _ste yuj_! _[Be strong!]_  
>  ~ peace & love,  
> PG  
> P.s. If you're enjoying this story, you may be interested in my ongoing T100 series rewrite, "Gravity". It takes place in a world where nearly everyone is still alive and facing canonical threats in very different ways. Check it out here: [ https://archiveofourown.org/series/1346269](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1346269) <3 Gravity fans--I promise an update soonish, and when I do update, you can expect it to be a big and action-filled one, at least. 😊 You lot are rock stars, very patient rock stars. Thank you for hanging in there!
> 
> P.p.s. *Spoons?? [ https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/ ](https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory)


	5. Bit by Bit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I choose to believe the Velveteen Rabbit thing last night was a shout out to me. 🙃

‘ _Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse._  
_'It's a thing that happens to you.  
When a child loves you for a long, long time,  
not just to play with, but REALLY loves you,  
then you become Real.'_

_'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit._

_'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful.   
_ _'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'_

_'Does it happen all at once, like being  
wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'_

_'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse.  
_ _'You become. It takes a long time.'_

\- Margery Williams, "The Velveteen Rabbit"

**Bit by Bit**

Clarke’s eyes opened slowly, intermittently, and with varying degrees of blurriness. The first few times she’d woken, she hadn’t managed to stay conscious for very long, and had been only vaguely aware of little flashes of happenings around her.

The first time she woke, there was mushy, sodden ground beneath her, and water poured down on her regardless of which way she tried to turn her head. She heard the faintest of growls, but her eyelids were suddenly weighted, and they pulled her mercilessly back down into the darkness, into the most absolute of nothings.

The second time she opened her eyes, she’d seen and heard a particularly strange confluence of images and words. There was a hat; a large one with a wide brim, like the cowboys of old had worn in her old picture books.

Clarke felt herself smiling at that, because she’d always dreamed of being a cowboy—not, she’d informed her father at all of four years old, a cow _girl_ , because none of her picture books had any in them. She’d reasoned that cowgirls must not get to have the same adventures; and so she would be a cow _boy_. She was devastated to learn she would never be able to rope a calf or ride a horse. 

Jake had dutifully borrowed every single western in the Ark’s considerable library in turn, and they’d watched them together on Abby’s late shifts, searching each one for cowgirl idols. As Clarke learned to write, they’d practiced her new skill by making a list of all the westerns they’d seen, and all the ones they had yet to, with notes about each. In addition to assigning points for each cowgirl shown, they had kept track of how many horses they saw, and how many dogs accompanied their masters through the backdrop of barren lands with exotic plants that Clarke would never see.

Even as a teenager, she spent every week looking forward to collapsing in front of the screen with her father—both of them sprawled on either end of the couch with a snack bowl between them, once she was too old to sit in his lap. Usually she would end up with her feet draped across his lap instead, falling asleep against the arm of the couch by the time they were on their second or third movie.

But that was then, and this was now; and right now, a possibly-real cowboy was drawling the sweetest of soothing nonsense words, and it was a great comfort in Clarke's most delirious and fearful of states so far.

The cowboy wasn't the only one there; she'd also caught a flash of long, blonde hair that might've been her own, and a small, shivering, fearful-looking girl whose blurry face immediately became Madi’s in Clarke’s delirious head. Swatches of conversation trickled into her ears, but none of the words made any sense to her.

“—see what I see?”

“Can’t bring her home, not with—“

“—choice. We… Better than that.”

“She was wi--! We can’t just l—“

“—ot going to, okay? Can deal with—later. “

“Ust hope it’s not too la—“

“Thanks pardner,” Clarke mumbled, or at least, thought she mumbled. Nobody seemed to respond, though, at least, not before her eyelids were once again dragging her back into the dark, empty hell of eternal nothingness.

🧟♂️♾👱🏻♀️

Clarke blinked slowly as she regained consciousness again, more confused than she’d ever been in her life.

Which frankly, was really saying something. From the moment her boots first touched the soft, mossy ground of Earth, there had been any number of times Clarke had felt completely disoriented. Stunned, shocked, and stupified, she had stood in the greedy maw of fate, watching helplessly as the universe turned itself inside out around her time and time again. Over and over, Fate came and unceremoniously ripped the rug from beneath Clarke Griffin's feet, never whistling _quite_ the same tune as it had the last time they'd met; lest she recognize the sound and ruin the latest, undoubtedly gut wrenching, rug-pulling surprise Fate had in store.

Anyway, the point was that hallucinating a cowboy was very on-brand for her, and that image, at least, had been imaginary; she felt quite confident about that.

The big question now was, had _any_ of it been real? The school, Alicia, the storm, the walkers..

Walkers.

Clarke tried to sit up, but made it only an inch or two before she cried out in pain unexpectedly. Something near her hip had snapped tighter than a rubber band and stung sharper than a sword. She saw stars exploding before her eyes, and it was happening on a completely unfamiliar backdrop; an indoor backdrop, from what Clarke could tell, but that didn't necessarily indicate safety. The school had well proven that point for her.

The pain forced her to lay back again, and take a few gasping breaths as her head swung around in a panic, trying to figure out where she was.

“Hey, hey, there. It’s alright, you’re safe.”

Clarke’s eyes darted across the foreign landscape to a man she didn’t recognize. He stood a fair distance from her, with both hands in the air, and a ten gallon hat on his head. At his hip was a holster with a fancy six-shooter in it, painted white and embossed in gold. He wore jeans with a plain leather belt, and a leather vest over a flannel button-up shirt, and of course, cowboy boots.

Well. He had a gun, but he wasn’t aiming it at her, and his hands were nowhere near it. That was something in her favor, she supposed.

“Who're you?” she groaned in reply, her throat like sandpaper on her thick, dry tongue. “Where—where..”

“My name’s John Dorie. Sounds like the fish, but it's not spelled like the fish. There's an i-e at the end. D-o-r-i-e,” he said, and his voice was a gentle drawl, just like in the westerns she’d watched growing up. “And you’re safe. This is my house, and it is one hundred percent walker-free.”

Clarke half chuckled in her semi-delirious state. It was far too insane to be real—rescued by an actual cowboy? One with the hat, and the gun, and the leather accessories, who even had the gentle ' _let me get that for you, little lady'_ personality down pat?

Obviously she was either dead or dreaming.

“Your hip is pretty well torn up. My, uh, lady-friend is a nurse, she’s the one that’s been caring for your injuries. I’d like to let her come in and take a look at you, Miss. If we can come to an agreement about you not going off and attacking anyone, you know. I don't mean to be presumptuous, we just don't know each other yet. Safety first,” he said, tipping his hat just slightly.

“Clarke,” she mumbled, forcing herself to scoot just slightly further up the bed despite the pain that exploded inside her. "My name is Clarke, with an 'e', and I'm not aware of any fish sharing my name. Or yours, either, actually. I don't know any fish at all."

The hallucinated cowboy just chuckled at her babbling, and not in an unkind way. His eyes sparkled just a bit as his posture relaxed, and it suddenly hit Clarke that the cowboy was, in fact, quite real. As real as anything else in this insane world, anyway; whatever that was worth.

“Clarke. That’s a solid name, there. My daddy used to listen to a lot of Petula Clark, you know. Quite a lady, she was. No 'e' in her name, though,” he said, reaching behind himself to tap out ' _Shave and a Haircut_ ' on the bedroom door.

Clarke couldn’t help smiling a little. “My dad did, too. He used to sing ' _Downtown_ ' in the shower."

Suddenly, something flickered in the back of her head, and she found herself panicking.

"Where's my friend, where's Alicia?" Clarke burst out, unbelievably angry with herself for her memory lapse, brief though it had been. “Where’s Alicia? Is she—“

Clarke was struggling to get out of the bed, the pain in her side already put out of her mind as she tried to stand up, intending to go rescue Alicia, and instead, her adrenaline-fueled but still injured body promptly collapsed into John Dorie’s already-waiting arms.

“Whoah, there. Alicia’s okay; she’s here. Right on the other side of that wall there, in fact. We're big fans of hers too, I gotta tell you, and I promise we're doing everything we can for her, Petula," John reassured her, his strong arms easily lifting her back into the bed. Clarke felt small and pathetic, and then, as her brain struggled to de-fuzz itself, scared and somewhat suspicious.

“If Alicia’s here, why didn’t you know my name?” She asked, fixing the man with what she hoped was a threatening look. Considering she couldn’t even stand up without his help at the moment, though, she highly doubted he was intimidated by her in the least.

John actually looked fairly crushed when he replied quietly, “Well, ‘ _okay_ ’ might’ve been a bit of an overstatement at the present time. She hasn’t woken up just yet. June, she says it doesn’t mean anything; just the usual suspects of trauma, exhaustion, blood loss, dehydration. And she must be right, since you’ve been snoozing away this whole time, and here you are, awake and brighter than a daisy. So I'm sure Alicia will be blooming again any minute now, too."

The door opened then, and John Dorie’s head swiveled quickly around to smile at the pretty blonde who was entering. She smiled a bit, but had concern lining her face, and her voice was soft when she asked him privately with an overly-pleasant smile towards Clarke, “Everything okay in here?”

“Oh, sure,” John replied cheerily. “Clarke here and I were just getting to know one another. You know, her daddy listened to Petula Clark, too?"

“Well, she must be alright then,” June replied, smiling and kissing his cheek. “I need to get at those bandages, so why don’t you go sit with Alicia for a bit?"

“Yes ma’am,” he responded, tipping his hat to her as they shared a brief, chaste kiss. He then tipped it to Clarke as well, and took what looked to be some sort of a candy from his pocket as he obediently left the room.

“Thank you. John seems nice. He said that you’ve been taking care of Alicia and I, so.. Thank you twice,” Clarke offered, looking at June tiredly, but appreciatively. June’s face had gone somewhat blank once John had left the room, and Clarke felt mildly nervous as the woman approached.

"John is a very nice man. A kind, _good_ man. Because of that, he doesn’t always see the dangers the rest of us do,” she explained, carrying over a tray of medical supplies and setting it on the nightstand.

"Some people might try to take advantage of that,” June continued meaningfully, as she retrieved the items she wanted.

“Some might,” Clarke agreed. “Not me. Any friends of Alicia’s are friends of mine.”

“You know, Clarke, I’m really glad you brought up friends." June pulled an ottoman closer to the bed and sat beside her. “Because another friend of ours is missing, and her van was left where we found you and Alicia. She's not the type to just abandoned her vehicle, so—"

Clarke felt her stomach flip sickly inside herself. “Al didn’t come back yet?”

Something—was it relief?—flashed in June’s eyes, and she both sounded and looked significantly less accusatory and much more concerned when she replied, “She left? On her own?”

“Sort of,” Clarke shook her head a bit as she tried to clear it, shifting upwards in the bed. “We were barricading the house, and there was a—a herd of them. The walkers. We ran to the basement, and Al wouldn’t come with us. She locked me and Alicia in, and said she was gonna draw the herd away.”

June looked incredibly troubled, and dropped what she was doing. She opened the bedroom door and left it open as she called out, “John, Al said she was drawing a herd away. Can yo—“

“I’m on it,” came the instant reply. It was barely half a minute before another door opened and closed, and Clarke raised her own troubled gaze to June’s back, as she rested her forehead against the doorframe.

“He’ll find her, won’t he?” Clarke asked hopefully, feeling unimaginably childish in the moment. She couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to Al, especially if Alicia was also--

June swallowed hard before lifting her head and interrupting Clarke’s spiraling, panicked thoughts. Unfortunately, her response wasn’t as comforting as Clarke had hoped it would be.

"He won’t come back until he finds something.”

She returned to Clarke’s side, worry lining her forehead as she motioned Clarke to lift the side of her shirt, which she did obediently.

"You and I still need to talk about something else,” she informed her, but not unkindly. Clarke sensed she knew what June wanted to talk about, when she caught sight of the bandage on her hip; the black-stained bandage, heavy with her lost Nightblood. Funny; she didn’t even remember hurting her hip too badly.

“Do you know how long you’ve been here?” June asked.

“I—I don’t.” Clarke didn’t even know how long she’d been Real, or how she had injured herself so badly without noticing, even considering; never mind how much time had passed as she and Alicia had laid out in the storm like an all-you-can-eat buffet.

“We brought you and Alicia here yesterday morning. The day after the hurricane hit.”

Clarke just nodded; two days wasn’t great, but it certainly wasn’t terrible. It would become pretty terrible if Alicia didn’t also wake soon, but she was trying incredibly hard not to think about that.

“But there’s a problem with that, Clarke.” She looked to June once more, as she tenderly removed the bandages at her hip. “And not just because I’ve never seen blood the color yours is before. That part is strange, but I, personally, am more concerned.. about this.”

Clarke’s brow furrowed, and the furrow grew significantly deeper when she looked where June was looking, at the soft curve of her own hip. There, in her tender white skin, was the most horrifying thing Clarke could imagine; far worse even, than the sight of the walker she and Alicia had used as finger-paint at the school.

There, in her very own, brand new, Real body, was the very prominent, very deep, and very obvious imprint of a human dental arch.

Although neither Alicia nor Al had actually explained to her what happened when you were bitten, she couldn’t imagine it was anything good. The pain in her hip seemed to spike as the information fully hit her, and she looked back to June with fear in her eyes.

“W—what’s going to happen to me?” She asked, her voice breaking slightly. “Am I going to die?”

“Normally, I’d say yes,” June replied quietly. “But I’ve never heard of someone being bitten who's still alive two days later. The fever alone starts within hours, at most. Two days is more than enough time to turn, but you have been.. suspiciously fever-free since we brought you here.”

Clarke frowned. “Turn? Like.. become one of.. them? A walker?"

June’s eyes narrowed slightly as she studied Clarke more closely. “You didn’t know that’s how it happens?” Clarke shook her head a little, feeling a little _too_ crazy. Like she wanted to grab the closest semi-sharp object and slice out the damaged flesh around the bite, though she knew it would do her no good.

“How, exactly, did you meet Alicia and Al? Where are you from?"

Clarke recounted the story as briefly as possible for June, leaving out the strangest parts as much as possible. June clearly didn’t believe a single word she said, anyway, but Clarke was too tired and scared to even care. Al might already be dead, Alicia might still die, and Clarke herself was probably going to start craving flesh any minute.

What did it even _matter_ if Nurse June and Cowboy John believed her?

“You think I’m crazy,” Clarke said quietly, after June had finished tending to her wounds in a much-appreciated silence.

“Yes. A little,” June admitted, smoothing the tape over Clarke’s side. “But I think everyone still alive is a little crazy by now, and you don’t seem like the kind of crazy that’s dangerous. So when you feel up to it, there’s a set of crutches there, if you want to get some air. It's very safe here, although it seems like that might be less of a worry for you than the rest of us."

"Thank you." Clarke looked at her, nodding her head a little. She wanted badly to ask more about the bite, but she knew June had no more answers than she herself did. She tried to just put it out of her mind, and it got slightly easier to do so when she realized her stomach was growling, and quite loudly. Made sense; Clarke hadn't eaten since Al's noodles days ago. Her cheeks turned pink as she quietly spoke again.

"Um, I—I hate to ask, but I’m really—“

“Hungry, I’m sure. John made a couple of steaks, believe it or not,” June finished in a kind tone for her, the corners of her lips curling up slightly at the mention of John Dorie.

When she processed what June had said, Clarke suddenly found the steam to sit up the rest of the way, her eyes a little wide and her lack of fever beginning to fade just slightly.

"Steak? Seriously, like.. Like, actual cowboy-cooked, cow meat, steak?”

"Some of it. There's also deer, rabbit, quail, even some moose he still hasn't explained," June chuckled a little despite herself, handing the crutches to Clarke. “Every time he makes one, he dedicates the first bite to all the people who mocked him for having three deep freezers.”

Clarke stood very slowly on the crutches, wobbling and nearly falling several times before she figured out how to move the legs of the crutches in sync while keeping the weight off her increasingly sore hip.

“I almost forgot, you’ll need these. Painkillers,” June rummaged in her pocket, and set a small prescription bottle on the night stand. The label had long since been bleached away by time and light, but as Clarke looked through the bottle, the pills inside looked safe enough.

“Thank you,” Clarke replied again, swallowing one of the pills with the small cup of water that had also been on the stand. She practically inhaled the water, and June tapped her fingertip against the doorframe on her way out.

“Easy, you don’t want to overload your stomach all at once,” she instructed her in a very motherly sort of way, and Clarke felt a pang in her heart as the warning made Abby’s face force its way to the forefront of Clarke’s fractured, exhausted mind.

🧟♂️♾👱🏻♀️

Clarke spent most of the afternoon lounging on the porch, her belly full of steak and enjoying the fresh, sweet sunshine for the first time since she’d appeared in this world. She’d checked on Alicia every half hour or so, until June had shooed her outside once more, claiming even the dead couldn’t rest properly with so much activity going on around them.

The house and property were blissfully quiet, including the actual _moat_ that surrounded it. Clarke found herself curiously needing to know if it was always so, or if it had formed as a result of the storm.

Having mastered walking with crutches, Clarke allowed herself to stray just far enough from the front of the house to discover an old tire swing tied up in a tree just out back. She carefully climbed into it, resisting the urge to pull back her bandages to view the bite again as a form of self-torture, and shifted until she found a semi-comfortable position on her back. She closed her eyes, swaying gently with the breeze and listening to leaves rustling all around her.

It was the most peaceful place she'd ever been, for certain. It was what they had all thought Sanctum could be when they'd first landed in the water-filled, breathable, paradise.

“John said we shouldn’t climb up there until he can replace the ropes. They’re fraying. It's not safe,” a voice interrupted her reverie quietly, but matter-of-factly.

The sudden, unexpected sound startled Clarke, who panicked a little as the tire swung a bit harder with her jerky movements. She barely caught sight of a young girl about Madi’s age, her features blurred as the tire twisted itself around.

“Ahh—oh, damn, can you plea—“ But the girl had already grabbed two of the ropes and dug her heels into the dirt, effectively using her body as an anchor to stop the wild movements of the swing. When the world stopped spinning so violently, and Clarke was fairly certain she wasn’t going to throw up the instant she did, she cautiously opened her eyes again.

The girl actually did vaguely resemble Madi, even once she wasn’t blurry any longer, and it tugged hard at Clarke's already overstretched heart. She had a rounded face, with pale skin and freckles sprinkled across her cheeks and nose, and her eyes were dark, with long lashes. She looked fearful, as well; as if she thought Clarke might attack her, so Clarke gave her a wobbly smile.

“Thanks, you’re a lifesaver,” she said to the girl, whose expression turned very dark at that. She said nothing, though, simply letting go of the tire and walking away without further discussion.

“Hey, wait,” Clarke called, scrambling to get out of the tire and grabbing for the crutches. “Please?” The girl still didn’t respond, but she did stop, though her back remained towards Clarke.

Clarke hobbled uneasily towards the girl, her arms already aching from the day’s hopping. She held one out to the girl anyway, smiling pleasantly. “My name is Clarke. It’s nice to meet you.”

“No,” the girl finally replied. “Trust me, it’s not. I’m not a good person to know.”

Clarke frowned a little when she started walking away again, and struggled to keep up with her. “Hey, I’m sure that’s not true, you know. I used to think that about myself, too. But my friend—he's more like my brother, really—Bellamy? He told me once that who we are, and who we need to be to survive, are very different things. It doesn't make you a bad person."

The girl turned her head slightly back towards Clarke, her eyes stormy and a defensive streak in her tone. “You can’t say that, you or your friend. You don’t even _know_ me, or the things I’ve done, or why I did them.”

Clarke was careful to keep her gaze steadily on the girl’s when she replied. “You killed someone, right? Maybe more than one someone. And maybe you did it ‘cause the alternative was that you could die, or someone you cared about could die, or maybe even because you were just _scared_. And maybe it was the right thing to do, or maybe there was a better way; and we don't always get to figure out which. But let me tell you something, as someone who has definitely killed way more people and done worse things than you could imagine. You're still you, underneath it all. Just like I'm still Clarke, you're still...?"

Clarke looked down at the girl quietly. She studied Clarke's gazefor a moment, and Clarke thought perhaps she'd gotten through; at least, until the girl gave an indignant huff and stormed off towards the woods again, far too quickly for Clarke to even hope to follow.

Feeling defeated, she began to hobble back towards the house. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw John Dorie across the moat, climbing out of Al's van. He paused to grab her camera bag and the box Clarke knew held her interview tapes, and so she wasn't altogether surprised when John re-emerged from the van alone. She was, however, still devastated as she watched him untying the rowboat he'd secured and climbing into it. He caught sight of her about halfway across the moat, and his apologetic face was clearly lined with worry and sadness.

Clarke swallowed hard and tried to think of all the times she'd been certain of someone's death--Octavia, Raven, Bellamy. Every single one of the Hundred when they'd had the bleeding sickness. Sure, she'd done her best to assure everyone they would be fine, they would live; but she'd been lying her ass off to all of them the entire time. They'd surprised her by surviving—most of them, anyway—she had to try to let herself be certain the objectively tough Al would, too.

But then, something occurred to her that instantly had her turning green with grief. John had driven the van, but Al had clipped the key to her bra; Clarke had watched her do so, and the telltale lump under Al’s shirt had still been there when she’d locked them in the basement.

That meant...

“No,” Clarke whimpered, shaking her head quickly as John approached the bank in the rowboat. "Al had the key, she--"

“She still does," John reassured her, bringing the little boat to the shore and climbing out.

"My daddy taught me to hotwire long before you were even a twinkle in _your_ daddy's eyes. It doesn’t mean anything, Petula. I didn’t find a thing to suggest Al came back at all. That means she probably had to shelter up somewhere far off, away from the herd and safe from the hurricane, right? I mean, we can't all lay bare-faced and napping in a category four, you know," he teased her gently, seeming fairly desperate to cheer her up.

Clarke felt guilty for being utterly unsoothable even as she pleaded, "She wouldn't leave her interviews behind this long. I know she wouldn't, John."

"She wouldn't," he agreed, the smile fading from his face. "Unless she had to choose between them and saving someone's life."

She swallowed hard. "What if she had to choose between the tapes and her own life?"

John sighed heavily, squinting into the setting sun and scratching the scruff on his chin distractedly. What he didn't do was answer, and that was more than enough of an answer to confirm what Clarke had already suspected.

His somber look made Clarke feel even worse. Reality or not, it felt like she imagined kicking a happy puppy might feel; he was clearly trying incredibly hard to please everyone around him. Sadly for the poor eager-to-please cowboy, he'd blindly moseyed right on into Griffin Gulch: the place where all joy came to die.

“How will she know to—to come here? Does she know this place?” Clarke fluttered around John as much as was possible on crutches, as he lashed the rowboat to a stake in the ground.

“I left her a note, and a little something to prove it was from me. She’ll be along soon enough,” he reassured her, and Clarke swallowed hard, but she couldn’t help but to trust the soft-spoken man. He seemed so confident, and she wanted badly to be even half as much so.

He led her back to the porch, careful to keep his strides short and slow, so Clarke could keep up. The young girl had, at some point, reemerged from the forest, and was raking leaves a few yards away from the front of the house. She had a sour, stubborn look on her face and she seemed to be very focused on her task.

Clarke leaned against the porch column, watching the girl quietly. John had stopped and was watching her too, as he removed a tiny white circle with twists on either side of it from his pocket and began unwrapping it.

“My mother would have fainted if I'd done chores with that kind of enthusiasm at her age. At any age, actually,” she remarked.

John smiled, putting the light-colored object from the wrapper into his mouth as he crossed his arms and rested one boot against the porch. “If we let her, she won't quit til the whole planet is put back in order.”

“They're pretty stubborn at that age.”

“Yep, they are. And they only get more stubborn as they get taller,” John added, his hand motioning about shoulder height.

Clarke smiled despite herself, thinking of some of Madi’s more incorrigible moments. “Hm, tell me about it.”

“You have kids?”

“Yes. Well, no. No, not anymore.” Clarke swallowed hard, looking over the river that was still flowing by, her voice growing softer. “I..Um, I did have a daughter. I adopted her when she was six.”

John studied her for a long, quiet moment, and Clarke was far too lost in her own thoughts to notice. When he did finally speak, he gently asked, “Would you permit me to speak plainly?”

Despite herself, Clarke felt a vaguely amused smile tugging gently at the corners of her lips as she inclined her head, inviting him to do so.

“It’s none of my never-mind, I know, but hear me out. When you become a parent, Clarke, it's for life, no matter if it's by more traditional means, or adoption, like you and June and I have. Now, it’s true your daughter's not here, and that's a real foul hand to be dealt. I don't envy you. But wherever your daughter might be, she's still your daughter, and you're still her mama in every single way that matters. Nobody can take that away from you, not even yourself.”

Her eyes watering rapidly, Clarke looked at John Dorie with a sort of gratitude she’d never felt before, and her voice was soft when she replied, “Thank you, John.”

John tipped his hat just slightly. “You’re welcome, Clarke.” He glanced back up at the darkening sky, and then to the girl, who was whipping the rake back and forth so quickly, it was nearly a blur. “Charlie, why don’t you go and get washed up, and maybe give me a hand with dinner?”

Charlie looked up from the pile of leaves, and nodded without responding verbally, dropping the rake and silently moving past them, into the house. 

“Charlie?” Clarke asked, after she had gone inside. “The same Charlie that Alicia told me about? The one that killed her brother, that she wants to kill? I thought she was with some other group."

"One and the same. She was, but she's ours now," John let out a long, slow rush of air as he sighed heavily. “So you see my dilemma, Petula? She’s a kid, even though she’s done a lot of adult-style wrongs. So she wants to be punished like an adult, but she’s still just a little girl."

“You don't survive this kind of world for four years by always doing the right thing, and I'm sure we've all screwed up a lot worse than Charlie," she turned to face him, fighting back a wince as Wells' face, followed by Charlotte's, flashed through her mind. “I'm on the side of giving kids a lot of leeway, especially at the end of the world. But Alicia is still going to be _really_ pissed. Possibly homicidal, still.”

“June thinks we shouldn't tell her right away. That Charlie won't be safe if she knows.” John shook his head a little, like he couldn’t believe the entire concept.

“June is right,” Clarke offered, her voice going even more quiet.

“No,” John replied, chuckling a bit nervously. “Alicia might be more riled up than a hare in hunting season these days, but she’s a good person.”

“She thinks Charlie isn’t, John, she told me so herself. Hell, she almost killed me because she thought I _might_ be with Charlie's former people. I don't think she has it in her to kill anyone out of vengeance; much less a child. I really, honestly don’t.”

Clarke had begun to turn towards the front door, but she paused. “But John?” He looked at her, his brow furrowed with concern. “I still wouldn't bet _my_ daughter’s life on it.”

“Hey, Clarke?” She stopped again, glancing back to him. “Thank you.”

Clarke blinked, mildly confused. “For what?”

“I don’t know why your blood looks like runny molasses, or how in the heck you managed to carry Alicia through a collapsed house in a hurricane when your leg is about as big around as my arm. I don't know how you both survived laying out there for so long, and I definitely don't know why you still haven't gotten a fever from that bite of yours, either. But we sure are grateful for all that, I don't mind telling you," he gave a thoughtful sigh this time, crossing his arms as he leaned against the railing.

"I don't make a habit of looking gift horses in the mouth, Clarke, and I know when to turn my own mouth back to my own business and just be appreciative.” He looked at her earnestly, with a quiet solemnity. “Thank you. I appreciate you looking out for us.”

Clarke found herself shaking her head uncomfortably. “I’m the one that should still be thanking you. Again. We both would have died if you guys hadn't found us, hadn't saved us." She paused, taking a shaky breath in. “Alicia still might die."

“None of that's your fault, you know. And Alicia, well, she's got the best nurse on the planet tending to her now, I can assure you. So I like her chances, and ours, too."

Clarke leaned on the railing as well, squinting into the sunlight beside him. "So you're just taking it on faith that things will work out?”

“Not much else to take it on these days, is there?” John pulled another of the white-wrapped little circles from his pocket and held it out to Clarke, who took it unsurely as he pulled out another and began unwrapping it himself with his free hand.

Clarke sighed in defeat, unwrapping what appeared to be some sort of a candy, admitting,“I guess there never really was, though. Was there?”

“I’ll toast to that,” John replied, and they clinked the candies together. “Alicia will wake up, and she’ll come around sooner or later. It’ll take as long as it takes.”

In an attempt to deflect the rush of feelings that had started barreling towards her when John unwittingly quoted Lexa, Clarke put the candy in her mouth as a distraction. When she tasted it, she briefly malfunctioned, her eyes closing in pleasure as she let the sweet disc slide over her underprivileged taste buds, which were practically singing their praises. 

She must have looked quite the fool, but John didn’t seem to notice her overreaction to her first taste of real Earth candy. He was completely focused on something across the river as he said thoughtfully, “We’ll be alright someday, you know. I can see it; just over there, on the horizon. We're all gonna be just fine when we get there.”

Clarke’s brows knit together as she attempted to follow his gaze, squinting to see what he was gesturing at. “Where?”

“To there, to where we're headed,” he replied, tilting his chin just slightly. He straightened his hat and leaned forward on the porch railing, watching the sun set with a slightly dreamy smile.

“Someday.” He nodded to himself quietly, glancing sideways to capture Clarke’s gaze one more time. “When we get to someday, Petula.”

She followed his gaze to the sleepy setting sun, and she squinted into it as the lovely soft glow filled up the inside of her chest like so many tender weightless clouds. Maybe he was right, and maybe he was wrong; but either way, Clarke thought maybe it was time she started taking a thing or two on faith as well. Quietly, she sucked on the sweet candy and watched the sun lowering itself behind the horizon with John Dorie.

Someday it was, then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The moral of the story is twofold:
> 
> 1\. John Dorie is a perfect, precious cinnamon roll who has never done anything wrong in his life.  
> 2\. The world needs more cowgirls.
> 
> Happy thursday!  
> Be well, be kind, ste yuj.


	6. Conversations With Dead People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke decides to take in a movie.

Behind tarnished mirrors a fairytale land.

Arms cut to ribbons by childish hands.

Nursery rhyme echo of years flying by.

Innocence lost in the wink of an eye.

Transmitting emotions as satellites cry.

This is the future and you want to die.

I want out of this mirror, this fairytale land.

My own private hell in the palm of my hand.

Self mutilation. Forgivable high.

Humpty Dumpty jump and die.

All the kings horses and all the kings men,

rewound the tape and played it again.

Feeding on images of life at an end.

A make-believe soul mate. A make-believe friend.

..in the dead of night you hear nursery rhymes,

a reminder of all those happier times.

When the world was wrapped in ribbon and lace.

When your mirror reflected an unbruised face.

\- Sneak Technique, "Rewind. Play. Freeze."

**Conversations With Dead People**

"There's a surprise waiting for you in the den," Abby called from the kitchen. The announcement was followed by a soft giggle from the den, and Jake set down the stack of folders he'd brought home.

"A surprise, you say? Is it a yacht? I always wanted a yacht."

Abby laughed as she followed him. "Where would we get a yacht? Or put it, or even use it, for that matter?"

Jake scoffed playfully as he gazed around the seemingly empty den for the source of the giggle. He kicked off his shoes with a sigh of relief, and flexed his toes in the argyle socks Abby and Thelonius always teased him about.

"Details, details. Okay, is my surprise that you're actually cooking, and we still have a den?" He took her hands excitedly. "You didn't burn down the Ark, that's it, right?"

Abby gasped in mock horror, pulling her hands back and swatting at him. "Oh, you're really mean.. I think you might need to spend a little time locked up to learn the error of your ways."

Jake have her a boyish grin, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. "Oh, really? Is _that_ my surprise?"

"You could say that." Abby smiled sweetly, patting his cheek gently. "Oh, Sheriff.."

Clarke hopped out from behind the couch as planned. Her hair was in messy braids beneath a cowboy hat that was very precariously balanced on top of her head, with what looked like a shirt balled up inside the brim. She wore one of Jake's shirts, far too large for the seven year old, and she was donning a shiny golden badge proclaiming _Sheriff_ across it.

"Oh-ho, what's this?" Jake laughed upon seeing the state of her.

She smiled widely, her tongue tucked into the gap where her front teeth had fallen out. She stuck her finger guns up at him and lisped, "There's a new Sheriff in town, Daddy!"

"Oh, no! I guess I'm in pretty bad trouble, if they called in the big guns," Jake drawled in his best approximation of an early twentieth century American cowboy as imagined by Hollywood.

"You are," Clarke proclaimed, poking the forefinger of one of her 'guns' into his stomach. "This town ain't big enough for the both of us!"

Jake slowly raised both arms in the air. "I'll go quietly, lawman. I don't mean to cause no trouble!"

"Liar," Abby informed him, swatting his backside with the towel she held. "You always mean to cause trouble. Lock him up and throw away the key, Sheriff Griffin." She smirked playfully, lifting an eyebrow at him. "Dinner is in five minutes... for everyone who didn't make fun of my cooking, anyway.."

Jake gave her a wounded look as Clarke tied his wrists together with one of her hair ties, chirping, "Okay, Mommy!"

"I have to go to jail _and_ I get no dinner? Harsh. Maybe I should just go back to work.. At least they let me eat there."

"No, Daddy!" Clarke lisped as she quickly finished binding his hands. "That's what you're in trouble for. You're already late, and we're supposed to watch our movie tonight."

Jake glanced to his wife for help, but Abby merely raised a single, unsympathetic eyebrow at him before exiting back to the kitchen. Jake winced, filling with guilt as he turned to meet his daughter's deep cerulean and slightly betrayed gaze.

"Oh, Clarke. I'm so sorry, honey. Something came up at work, and I had to stay awhile longer," he explained gently. "They needed me to be there."

Clarke studied him innocently, idly plucking at and adjusting her hat. "Was it _very_ important?"

"It was, Princess." Jake ducked his head to meet her eyes, ensuring Clarke knew he was quite serious when he continued, "Not nearly as important as you are, though. Can you forgive me?"

Clarke nodded, her young face far more serious than Jake had ever wanted to see it be. The nature of his and Abby's jobs necessitated their daughter learning far too early on that 'important' for _them_ meant important for _all_ of them; for _their people_.

"I forgive you, Daddy. But.. maybe, to make it up, we can watch _two_ movies tonight?" she immediately pouted, her eyes growing wider and rounder.

"Oh, you're good," Jake chuckled, shaking his head a little. "Too good. Okay, two movies, and maybe the Sherrif can un-arrest me so I can put them on?" he returned the same pathetic look she'd given him, causing her to break into giggles.

"I suppose we can let him loose, Sheriff," Abby acquiesced, bringing the premade meal trays in and setting them on the coffee table.

Clarke obediently released Jake, who scooped her up into a hug and kissed her cheek as soon as he was freed. "My hero, the Sheriff of Griffin Gulch. The finest cowgirl in all the land."

Abby took Clarke's hat, retrieving her scrub top from it and pulling it on over her tank top.

"You're not eating with us?" Jake asked, glancing at the three trays on the table as he swayed with Clarke in his arms.

"I wanted to, but I have to scrub in at eight," she said apologetically, her eyes flicking to the clock on the wall, which indicated it was dangerously close to eight already.

"I got called in early for a surgery on a patient with deep lacerations from broken glass," Abby explained briefly while miming drinking from a hooch bottle. She was careful to keep her voice calm and even; hoping to appear nonchalant to Clarke for the remainder of her explanation.

"She has a daughter about Clarke's age, and it's just the two of them. I offered to let her spend the night while her mother is in medical. She's a sweet, quiet, little girl. Highly intelligent. I doubt she'll be any trouble at all." Abby was even more apologetic now, and Jake clasped her arm gently, letting her know with a look that he agreed with her call.

"That will be fun," Jake told Clarke, who had developed a stormy look on her face, her eyes turning slightly grey. "I could only get movies we've seen before anyway, but they're two of our favorites. It'll be nice to share them with someone else for a change, right?" he prodded.

Clarke shrugged a little, bowing her head. "I guess."

"Clarke," Abby admonished gently. The blonde lifted her head, her eyes already filled with shame.

"I'm sorry, Mommy. I'll be nice to her, I promise."

"That's my girl," Abby said, kissing her cheek and putting her hat gently back in place, smiling when the brim slid immediately back down over Clarke's eyes.

"Quick, kiss me before the Sheriff sees," Jake whispered loudly, leaning in to meet his wife's lips. Jake smiled into the kiss when Clarke squealed and wiggled in protest under the large hat, his heart filling with joy when he felt Abby smiling back against his lips.

A buzz sounded, briefly flicking the lights in their suite, and they reluctantly separated. Abby pushed the hat back so Clarke could see again, giving the girl a kiss on the nose.

"That'll be Shumway with the daughter. Her name is Raven, and she's.. having a rough time. Probably since well before today. This evening will be a relief for her, I think."

She opened the door without waiting for a response. One of the guards stood with a small, thin girl with very dark hair and eyes framed by long, dark lashes. She was staring at her sneakers, which had tears in them and broken laces. Her long hair was messy and knotted, and there were smears of dirt on her cheeks with dried tear tracks running through them.

Clarke unconsciously shifted closer to Jake, who gently set her down in response before heading to the door.

"Hi, Raven, please come in," Abby said, opening the door wider for the girl.

When she didn't immediately step forward, the guard nudged the girl roughly on her shoulder. Abby's arm snapped out quickly, grabbing his wrist. She gave him an overly-pleasant smile as she squeezed his limb with a brief flash of danger behind her eyes. "That won't be necessary, thank you. She's a visitor, and a little girl; not a prisoner, Shumway."

The guard just scoffed in annoyance as he retrieved his arm, replying sarcastically, "Sure thing, _Chancellor_."

Jake kissed Abby's cheek. "Go, before he starts pushing you on down to surgery next. We'll be just fine here, right girls?"

Both girls just looked at Jake unsurely, and when he turned back to Abby, she had a similar look. "We're good. Go save lives and end small injustices, Supergirl."

Abby rolled her eyes. "Goodbye, girls and husband. Eat before it gets cold again."

Jake closed the door behind him, then turned to the girls. Clarke was peeking out from under her hat at the girl and, finally deciding she met with whatever standards a seven year old uses for deciding about people, Clarke stuck her hand out to her.

"I'm Clarke. Do you like cowboy movies?"

Raven stared at her with disbelief for a moment, then tentatively stuck her hand out as well, looking vaguely surprised when Clarke shook it heartily.

"I've never seen one," Raven replied quietly; nervously, unsurely. "We don't have a movie player."

Clarke looked stunned, and Jake quietly set out the flatware and napkins for them, a keen ear listening.

"We should watch _How the West was Fun_ first, then," Clarke said decisively. "It's for little kids, but it's the only one with two cowgirls in it, and that's us." She stuck her hat on Raven's head with her free hand, and the other hand, which was still clasped on Raven's own, tightened as Clarke used it to lead the stunned girl to the couch.

Jake smiled to himself as Raven adjusted the hat so she could see, then looked in bewilderment from his daughter to the tray before her.

"This whole thing is just for me?" Raven asked quietly, looking to Jake unsurely.

His heart shattered inside when he realized why Abby had invited the girl home; after all, it wasn't exactly standard procedure for doctors to feed the kin of their patients.

It _was_ however fairly standard procedure for Abby's heart to decide to do exactly this sort of thing, and he quickly replied, "Yes, of course, Raven. And Clarke and I always have snacks on movie nights too, so I hope you still have room afterwards for some popcorn and ginger beer," he replied smoothly.

A huge smile overtook Raven's face, and she sat back comfortably next to Clarke on the couch. The girls chattered excitedly about the movies, digging into their dinners in between giggles.

Jake smiled and retrieved the movies, pausing and shaking his head when he realized Clarke had peeked at them already, if she knew which ones they were.

Well, of course she had; she _was_ his daughter after all, as Abby so often reminded him. He took the movies and headed back to the girls with a relaxed smile on his face, the day's stressors forgotten--for the moment, at least.

🧟♀️🧟♂️ ♾ 👱🏻♀️👩🏻

Clarke gnawed anxiously at her thumbnail, staring into the dark as she carefully rolled over again. Alicia still slept on the other side of the wall, and everyone else had wandered off to bed at one point or another. Charlie was asleep on the couch, and Clarke felt guilty as she carefully stepped around John and June in a pile of blankets on the floor. She and Alicia had unwittingly commandeered the only beds in the house, and Clarke uncomfortably reassured herself that she would give hers back come morning. She grabbed Al's bag and the box of tapes as quietly as possible, and let herself out the front door.

Her hip throbbed with every step she took, but she had left the crutches by her bedside and had no intention of retrieving them. She'd barely made it across the gauntlet of the small cabin floor without the dreaded things. She hadn't wanted to say it to June--who already thought she was genuinely crazy--but the bite was far from the worst pain she'd suffered.

She took her time, but eventually made her way to the tire swing again. Ignoring Charlie's earlier warning, she climbed carefully into the swing once more, settling on the side of it with her feet braced on the opposite wall of the tire. She began to sway lightly as she retrieved the camera from inside the bag, hanging the strap of the bag on an overgrown branch she could just barely reach.

She opened the box of tapes, reading through the titles curiously. They were all strangely named, and it was quite intriguing, she had to admit. Al knew how to sell a story, that much was certain. Her eyes flicked past her own interview, _The Commander_ , to titles like _The Oil Fields, Abe/Doctor, Dug Shelter, St. Luke's Hospital, Killeen Tx_ , _Slim_ , and even one labeled _Skidmark,_ which Clarke wrinkled her nose at. She plucked out the one Al had tossed her, _Madison_ , and closed the box, setting it on the ground carefully. She loaded the video and scooted down, resting on her back in the swing with her legs dangling over the edge before hitting play.

Alicia came on screen, flanked on one side by a pretty girl with dark hair and deep, golden-tan skin. On her other side was a slightly older man with cocoa skin and a sour look on his otherwise handsome face.

"What are your names?" Al's voice asked from outside the frame. Based on the direction her subjects responded in, she was just to the side of the camera, and Clarke realized they were inside Al's SWAT vehicle.

"Alicia Clark," Alicia mumbled, her misery even more obvious on her face than it had been in person.

"Victor Strand," was the handsome man.

"Luciana," the petite young woman didn't offer a last name, and Al didn't push for one. Clarke supposed it didn't really matter; as unkind as it had been for Alicia to say so, Clarke agreed that Al's tapes served little purpose in what was left of this world. The likelihood of anyone seeing them was so small as to be practically nonexistent.

Though the irony that she, herself, was watching one wasn't entirely lost on her; she merely deemed it coincidental; just like running into Lexa's twin on a different planet in a different timeline was.

Her parents had both been particularly skilled in the field of denial, too, when they wanted to be.

Anyway, she was doing this for Alicia; she had no intention of watching the other videos, particularly _Skidmark_.

Clarke watched the interview silently; respectfully. It was hard to hear, all of it. Most of all when they spoke of the stadium they'd settled, all with the memory of joy in their eyes and a shared dreaminess to their tones. It had become a home, a haven. They had begun to believe they might be safe there, but they never really were, and that's what angered them the most. That they'd _believed_ in the first place.

Clarke knew the feeling.

They spoke with such fondness for Madison Clark; a woman who had survived two husbands and her drug addicted rebel of a son, Nick, and still turned the abandoned fortress of a stadium into a home. How they had taken people in at her behest; how they had struggled with doing so as much as they struggled with a life of sudden seeming boredom and pseudo-laziness. Doing nothing after doing _something_ at all times for so long could be maddening in all sorts of strange and unexpected ways; Clarke knew that much to be personally true.

They spoke of how Madison had made Charlie her pet project. How Nick had, too, as Luciana recounted the ill-advised trip to the bookstore for her. The dark-souled little thing had by all accounts, preyed on Madison's ever-expanding heartstrings. In betraying all of them to the Vultures, she had, it seemed, single-handedly destroyed the stadium and gotten Madison killed in the resulting herd of walkers. But no matter; the crops were already dying of disease, as crops did anyway.

Destruction and hunger within. The enemy without.

_Where did you lead your people when there was nowhere left to go?_

It was a question Clarke had faced so many times it made her sympathetically ill to think of poor Madison, watching her dream burn down around her. Engulfed in flame and screaming her last moments in utter peace because of her knowledge that her family, her people, would survive.

It was the only thing that would bring someone like Madison peace in her final moments; it was the one thing that would allow her spirit to rest in peace for eternity--wherever spirits went that weren't Clarke, anyway. She hoped Madison hadn't gone and ended up in her home universe; there was no rest to be had there for the weary, either.

Oh, Clarke understood Madison a little all _too_ well; Alicia however, remained somewhat of a frustrating mystery. Her losses were heavy, certainly, but this wasn't the whole story, not by a long shot. The picture Alicia's face and moods had painted was one of deep pain, and change of a cosmic sort inside yourself. Something even stronger and more base than grief.

Clarke had recognized it in herself the moment she pulled the trigger on the first gun she held. Bellamy smiling all the while, with genuine pride in the background. The power had coursed into her veins like a drug, and suddenly she was a different person. She was a woman who could turn that gun on Bellamy's traitorous, lecherous ass, and finally stop worrying about him driving a knife into her back for good.

But she didn't; she didn't pull the trigger, because that's the woman she decided to be in that moment. The leader she decided to be.

Clarke had always been purely grateful for that choice; never once doubted it. She would die for Bellamy in a heartbeat with zero regrets. But she was forever altered by that moment, that choice she'd had to make; her timeline chosen, however sharp a curve it had thrown to her path recently. Something, or some _things_ , had happened to Alicia to set her on a similar crash course. She'd made a choice somewhere along the line, and it had been the wrong one, or she thought it was; that was the secret that haunted her behind those deep, dark, troubled emerald eyes.

That was the sickness in her that needed healing, and Clarke unwittingly made another course-altering (or perhaps, course-correcting?) decision in that moment. She would discover that hidden atrocity; gently ferret it out of the girl. That had to be her purpose here, and why Alicia wore the face of the only person she'd ever truly loved before. She could see the sickness in Alicia, rotting her like a cancer from within; she knew how to get it out and make the girl whole once more.

Clarke watched and listened with tears streaming down her cheeks as they spoke of Nick, still firm in his belief that Charlie could be rehabilitated even then. Recounted the look of shock on his face when he realized the bullet tearing through his chest had come from a gun; a gun that was unsteadily wielded by a hand that belonged to Charlie.

How long Nick lay there, gasping his last breaths with a look of confusion and disbelief. He hadn't understood, even as he lay dying from her bullet, that there was evil in the world, and some of it had leaked into the young girl he'd been so desperate to save.

Alicia came close to hyperventilating at one point, and Clarke noted appreciatively that both Luciana and Strand had laid gentle touches on her back in comfort. She wondered what had happened to these people that were once so close with Alicia; with her family.

But when Alicia jerked away from their offered comfort like she'd been burned, Clarke wondered if it was deliberate that Alicia had been off by herself when they first met. Al had just _shown up_ , and Clarke assumed they were together, never questioning the timing of the rescue. But if there were others from Alicia's group--and their current location as well as the steak filling her own belly and the video she was watching, all proved there were--then maybe Al had simply been searching for Alicia at the school, and they'd all been very lucky that day.

Clarke knew a thing or two about running away, too, after all.

The tape had ended, and she turned the camera off, setting it carefully back in the bag and putting the tape back in its box.

"I guess you think you know me now," came a voice in the dark that startled Clarke into nearly flipping herself out of the tire.

"Jesus, Alicia. You're awake!" Clarke exclaimed, struggling to push herself up in the rocking swing. Alicia stood only a few feet away, and appeared to have grabbed the crutches from Clarke's bedside.

"Yeah, and crippled," she grumbled, motioning at her braced leg. "Good thing we don't spend a lot of time running these days."

Clarke smiled despite herself, though Alicia's glower held steady. "You must be feeling better if you can muster the strength for sarcasm. I thought you were a goner."

Alicia fixed her with a steady, penetrating glare. "Is that why you thought it wasn't a huge violation to watch that tape? Cause you figured I was already dead?"

Clarke's face fell into a confused frown as she struggled to climb off the stupid swing. "What? No, Al told me.. uh.."

Alicia crossed her arms on the crutches, raising one eyebrow and clearly waiting for the rest of Clarke's excuse.

Clarke sighed heavily as she landed one foot in the dirt and began to stabilize the tire. "I asked her what your story was, and she threw me the tape. I--I'm really sorry, Alicia. And no, I don't think I know you because of it, any more than I think you know me from hearing that version of my story."

Alicia narrowed her eyes. "Version? So what, the time-traveling space alien is calling _me_ a liar?"

Clarke leaned over, using a branch for purchase as she carefully began extracting herself from the swing. "That's not what I meant. I mean--oh god, I'm gonna have a heart attack doing this like this."

Clarke stopped struggling, still half straddling the tire and turning both her breath and minimal energy entirely towards talking to Alicia.

"I meant that I told Al a bunch of facts. Things that happened, people that were involved. What I didn't say was any of the real stuff."

"The real stuff."

Clarke nodded a little, her voice quiet. "Like how every time I go to sleep, I still see Lexa's face. First, she's happy and smiling. We had.. such a hard time finding each other. And we had finally moved past it all and under it we found this beautiful thing that was.. just ours, you know? It was just me and Lexa's. And then.. She's in my arms and her eyes are lifeless, they're so dark and empty. Blood everywhere, her--her whole self just.. Gone. Just like that."

Clarke swallowed hard, her voice quaking. "I didn't tell Al or her tape that I'm a grown woman who is afraid of the dark because I can't stop seeing the love of my life being killed by a bullet meant for me. That kind of thing," Clarke finished in a whisper, her cheeks shining in the moonlight with the tears she had shed for Alicia and for herself; for Lexa.

Alicia swallowed hard. She had several tear tracks running down her own face, but Clarke's honesty had only seemed to anger her.

"I--Am I supposed to feel sorry for you now? Okay, you know, I'm really sorry my face reminds you of your dead girlfriend. It won't be around here much longer, anyway. I'm leaving in the morning."

Clarke pulled her injured leg free from the tire and clumsily hopped over to steady herself against the trunk of the tree.

"No, of course I don't want you to feel _sorry_ for me. Jesus, Alicia, why are you so damn--" Clarke wrung her hands in frustration, unable to find the right word.

"Look, I'm sorry I watched the video, okay? I just meant that what happened to you, with Nick? I've been there. I held someone I loved in my arms and watched them die, too. So I understand what it's like to feel so shitty about everything, all you can do is run away. Isolate. Try to disappear."

Alicia leaned on the crutches once more, her voice taking on a syrupy tone, "So now it's your mission to talk me out of doing it?"

"No," Clarke replied simply, gathering Al's things. "I can't really do that. I ran away, too. More than once. And I'd do it again, too."

"So, you're not gonna talk me out of it."

"Nuh-uh."

"And you're not gonna say anything about the interview, or try to get me to open up and share my feelings."

"Nope."

"What _are_ you gonna do?" Alicia finally asked, her reluctantly interested gaze locked on the blonde.

"Take Al's tapes back inside the house, get some noodles out of it, and start a fire out here to cook them so I don't wake anyone up."

"Oh. Right. That's why I came out here, looking for someone awake," Alicia looked up, suddenly remembering. "Is that Al on the couch? Is she okay?"

Clarke's blood ran cold; she had definitely not anticipated this situation, and she felt bad. It felt like betraying John and June. But she was already in hot water with Alicia, and eventually she was going to figure out who was on the couch on her own. At best, Clarke would look like an idiot for even trying to lie about it; at worst.. well, she didn't want to think about that.

"Um, no. No, it's not Al," Clarke finally sighed heavily. That would be, ah, Charlie, actually. Listen," she continued quickly, "Alicia, I know what you're gon--"

"Are you _fucking_ kidding me?" Alicia's face went instantly taut with rage and disbelief. "They brought that little animal home? They _know_ what she did!" Alicia's voice was approaching hysterical, and Clarke tentatively moved closer to her.

"Alicia.. They just--she's a little girl on her own. They couldn't leave her, I know you know that in your heart. I'm so sorry, Alicia." Clarke's voice was soft and sincere, and something was rapidly breaking behind Alicia's anguished eyes.

"I--I can't go back in there. I can't be in there with her," she babbled, quickly beginning to panic. "I can't. If I'm in there with her, I'll kill her, a-and I don't want t-to.. Please, Clarke."

Something about the desperation in the way Alicia said her name struck deep in Clarke's heart, and she carefully put her arm around the girl's shaking shoulders. "Okay. Okay, we won't go back in there. Hey, come on."

She encouraged Alicia forward, and she stumbled along with the crutches, counting on Clarke's firm hand on her back to steady her.

"We can both just sleep _next_ to the house, okay? We can make a fire, I'll grab some blankets from inside. We'll make some noodles, pull up some damp, cold ground.. it'll be just like old times," she joked gently.

Alicia, rendered speechless by her panic attack, merely nodded and let Clarke guide her clumsily to John's fire pit. She lowered Alicia carefully onto an overturned log and set the crutches nearby. She pulled the bottle of painkillers June had given her out of her pocket and handed it to Alicia.

"Pain pills, will help the stabbing in your chest," she explained.

Alicia furrowed her brow unsurely. "How did that happen? I don't even remember anything after Al.." she trailed off.

"Oh," Clarke blinked. "Um, I'm pretty sure I broke your rib when I did CPR."

Alicia looked at her, both confused and clearly scandalized. "When you _what_? What the hell happened out there, Clarke?"

Clarke groaned internally. "Let me get the noodles and blankets first. This could take awhile."


	7. Still

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spurred on by trauma and drink, Clarke and Alicia finally have an actual conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't even tell you guys how many comments on the last chapter made me cry. It's been an exceptionally hard couple of weeks here for me, and it's really just been a lovely thing to be receiving so many wonderful, thoughtful comments to keep my spirits boosted. I wish I had the energy to reply individually, I truly do, because you are all just so amazing. Please know how much I appreciate you, especially given that this was a story I was hesitant to post originally--I didn't think anyone was as interested in this kind of a crossover as I was, and, well, I know when to admit I'm wrong. I hope y'all find this chapter to your liking, so to speak, and that it paints a bit of a clearer picture about Alicia for those who don't follow FtWD as well as stoking that slow burn fire.. don't worry, the Good Stuff's coming soon. ;)  
> Until next time,  
> Be well, be kind, _ste yuj_.  
> \- PG

For a long time he lived in the

toy cupboard or on the nursery floor,

and no one thought very much about him.

Between them all, the poor little Rabbit

was made to feel himself very

insignificant and commonplace,

and the only person who was

kind to him at all was the Skin Horse.

\- Margery Williams, " _The Velveteen Rabbit_ "

**Still**

Once she retrieved what they would need to sleep fireside, Clarke filled Alicia in on what had happened to them at the house very briefly as they worked together to get the fire burning. When she had covered the span of time up until she'd woken to find John Dorie standing in the room, she paused and glanced up at the girl unsurely.

"And, yeah. They told me you were still out, but now you're not and I'm pretty damn grateful."

Alicia just continued to study her quietly, a thick quilted sleeping bag wrapped around her fragile birdbone shoulders as she shivered slightly in the cold air of the night.

"You saved my life," she finally said, her voice quiet with disbelief.Clarke, however, was busy being distracted by the simplicity of striking a match to start a fire.

_Really, a simple little match, can you believe it?_

The Hundred had given up on their minimalist Earth Skills knowledge by the fifth time a fire needed relighting. They'd abandoned the several carefully carved bow drills they'd made in favor of working with a handful of dry leaves and an exposed, sparking wire at the back of the dropship that had been only a little more dangerous to use than John Dorie's box of little fire sticks. Monroe had burned her thumb knuckle nearly to the bone lighting their first electrical fire, and Clarke couldn't help a tiny internal but wistful smile at her memories of the feisty girl.

"You saved mine," Clarke finally responded. It was a weak response, and certainly not the one Alicia was searching her face so intently for right then, and Clarke knew it.

Alicia frowned. "I threw a couple Molotovs and slowed down long enough for you to catch up. Oh, and taught you to cover yourself in entrails. You dragged my unconscious body out of a collapsed house in a hurricane by yourself with some pretty significant injuries of your own, and thenbrought me back to life after I drowned. Bit of a difference, really." Alicia paused for a second, her eyes searching out the moon in the crystalline sky before she continued.

"And _you_ did it for someone who treated you like shit." She added the last part in the saddest tone Clarke had heard her use yet, and it gave a hard yank at her heart as she tossed the lit match onto the bundle of kindling.

"I just did what anyone would've done," Clarke replied dismissively, just wishing Alicia would let it go, now that she knew the truth.

"Bullshit," Alicia muttered, but there was no venom in it; she merely sounded tired and defeated.

Clarke just nodded once decisively as the flames began to devour the bottom layer of wood and coals. She’d been considering something, and the complicated look on the other girl’s face made her decision much easier. She quietly made her way around the side of the cabin, to what seemed at first glance to be an innocuous little storage shed. She felt Alicia’s eyes boring holes with curious confusion into her back as she opened the door.

Clarke hummed triumphantly to herself as she grabbed two mason jars from the neatly-arranged shelf on the wall. An image of Monty’s excited face filled her head as she gazed briefly at what she’d recognized as a similarly designed still as his old one, when she'd seen it through the one tiny, dirty window on the shed earlier. With a firm closing of the door, Clarke shoved the painful picture from her exhausted mind and headed back to Alicia with the offerings in hand.

Alicia’s brows nearly rose off her forehead when she saw what Clarke held, her gemstone eyes a light greenish-hazel as the flickering flame reflected off the tiny gold flecks surrounding her pupil.

"Please tell me that’s exactly what I think it is," Alicia practically moaned, clutching the quilt tighter around herself in prayer.

"Well, it’s not a lifetime supply of clean water, if that’s what you’re thinking," Clarke joked lightly as she approached the fire pit once more. She offered one of the jars to Alicia, who very nearly snatched it from her hand.

"Thank god," she informed Clarke, already unscrewing the lid on her jar and taking a generous gulp from it.

Clarke chuckled lightly despite herself, opening her own jar. The moonshine had almost no odor to it—something Monty had told her offhandedly once meant it was a higher quality hooch. It was reassuring, since she knew poorly-prepared moonshine had a chance of blinding you; among any number of other uncomfortable and inconvenient side effects Clarke would rather avoid.

👱🏻♀️ ♾ 👩🏻

**El Sereno, Los Angeles, California, 2008/2010**

Alicia sat cross-legged on her bedroom floor, her slim fingers carefully twirling her secret treasure as she listened to the chaos exploding in the house around her.

Her mother was yelling at Nick again, and Nick was yelling back even louder than he usually did. Now that puberty had settled in fully, he had a man's voice and a man's height, and he'd started exaggerating them both to win arguments against the women in his life. Alicia couldn't stand it, and thankfully, Madison continued to refuse to be intimidated by it.

"Why do you always _do_ this _,_ Nick? Why do you have to do these stupid, ridiculous things? You’re ridiculously smart, Nick, so why can’t you just be—"

"What?" Nick snapped, the challenge thick in his sneering voice as he slammed something against the wall. "Normal? Why can’t I be normal, Mom? Because I’m _not_ normal, okay? I’m not normal, and I’m never gonna _be_ normal!"

"Nick," Madison admonished him softly. "Nick, no. Never. I don’t want you to be whatever it is you think passes for normal, Nick. I want you to be the special, unique, _smart_ kid I know you are. You have so much—"

"Don’t say potential," Nick warned, his voice growing stronger and angrier. "Don’t say potential again! I’m so _sick_ of hearing how much potential I have. I don’t need you to quote my IQ at me again, I don’t need the stupid guidance counselor bullshit, Madison, I—"

"God, that mouth of yours, Nick," Madison scolded. "And it’s _Mom_ , at least until the day you move out."

She turned the kitchen faucet on then, and Alicia only knew she’d done so because the pipe rattled inside the wall, vibrating it against the far post on her bed.

It had been that way for months now, and the sound had grown to be almost a comforting sort of a thing to her. Their father had gone on a do-it-yourself binge over a long weekend and gotten as far as opening the wall up in the kitchen to replace the c-strap on the pipe.

_Next weekend_ , he’d said. Next weekend he would finish it, and Alicia—a Daddy’s girl from the word go, Madison liked to say—would assist him. Up to their elbows in copper piping and hardware, juggling power tools and drywall sheeting with mesh wire. Making a mess and wearing matching tool belts, while Madison smiled as she breezed by on her way to deal with Nick’s latest mess.

Next week never came, though. Or it had, rather, but it hadn’t mattered, because by then Alicia and Nick had been fatherless. And so the kitchen wall remained, a neat square cut out of it and revealing the loose, rattling pipe that would now never be fixed. Not because Madison—a tough-as-nails woman in her own right—couldn’t fix it herself, but because to do so would suggest some sort of finality or closure, and the Clark family would be allowed neither of those things.

"I could move out right now," Nick taunted her. "That’s what you really want, right? Get rid of your problem child and go back to your perfect little life without me in the wa—"

Alicia cringed when she faintly heard Madison’s hand connect with Nick’s cheek, followed by her mother’s faint gasp of surprise, shock, and guilt. It was unexpected; Madison had never raised a hand to her kids before. But that was Nick, in a nutshell. He somehow knew where everyone’s buttons were, and how best to push them. He was able to reduce grown adults with otherwise well-balanced personalities to enraged, screeching toddlers, frustrated to near insanity with hisself-destructive, trouble-seeking, willful ways.

Alicia drew her knees up to her chest, her dark lashes fluttering against her cheeks as she folded in on herself, twirling the thin white tube of the cigarette between her fingertips. If she lit it, would Madison eventually realize? Would she smell the telltale stench of the spiraling smoke downstairs, see the yellow nicotine staining around her daughter’s fingernails, or was she still too preoccupied with Nick to even notice?

Would she _always_ be too preoccupied with Nick to notice anything now? Too distracted by his antics to notice Alicia?

Maybe if she were smaller, less prominent. Quieter.

_Perfect. She could be perfect, perhaps._

Certainly, she could never cause more trouble than Nick; not with the generous head start he had already, so what other option did she have, really? She couldn’t beat him to the attention, so she would make herself so small, so quiet, so invisible, that nobody could help _but_ to ignore her.

If she pretended it was what she wanted too, then maybe it wouldn’t hurt as much.

Madison was objectively a good mom, Alicia thought, her purple glitter nails picking at a small plastic tab. Madison _tried_ , was the thing, and Alicia knew she should be grateful for it, because some parents didn’t even bother. It wasn’t really Madison’s fault that Nick was too much kid for one parent, and Alicia truly didn’t hold it against her.

And yet, there was a burning need deep in her chest that taunted her and tugged on her heart, on her brain, on the back of her tongue. Made her want to scream into the night sky that she was _here_ , god damn it all, and she _existed_ , and she _mattered_. That she had overwhelming emotions and gnawing needs, and one of those was the deep craving a child has for her mother, regardless of what kind of a mother she might have.

If Alicia was a different sort of a kid, she might try and outdo Nick; might try to fight him for the attention that was essentially her birthright. She hadn’t _asked_ to be born, after all. She certainly hadn’t asked for a brother addicted to walking on the dark side of the planet, addicted to the pain and the risk and god knew what else by now. She had a right to be mothered, too, didn’t she?

But she was _the_ _good kid_ , now; that much was clear. Every member of the family had a role to fill, and Nick had claimed the Problem Child role from the moment he was born; before Alicia was even a twinkle in her parents’ eyes.

Alicia wondered sometimes, if her parents had waited just another year or two—just long enough to find out what a handful Nick was going to be—then perhaps she wouldn’t exist at all. Who would voluntarily add another life onto the heaping plate already laid before the Clark family?

Alicia’s chipped nail determinedly scratched at the plastic wrapper and, with a set to her jaw, she pulled the tab loose and unwrapped the pack of cigarettes. She carefully tugged one free, setting the rest of the pack aside and inspecting the forbidden item closely; curiously. Like she'd never seen one before, when in truth she'd found herself reaching for the oddly comforting poison tubes more and more often lately.

_Nick smokes them all the time; there must be a reason, right? They must make him feel better._

To relieve stress, maybe, although it baffled Alicia as to what, exactly, Nick’s stressors could be that were so much more severe than Alicia’s. So severe that he had to try every potential coping mechanism he could find; take every substance he had access to in an attempt to dull the pain of his very existence.

They’d _both_ lost their father, after all, and they _both_ had to deal with the sudden imposition of Madison’s new boyfriend, Travis Manawa, and his extraordinarily unpleasant offspring, Chris. _Boyfriend_ —what a stupid word for a 40-something-year-old mother-of-two to even use. It had sounded ridiculous when she said it for the first time, holding a small rectangle planter with three baby plants: rosemary, thyme, and sage; that he’d gifted her with, knowing her love of fresh herbs in the kitchen.

He’d come over the following night and cooked them dinner in an attempt to bond with Madison’s kids—or perhaps to encourage his own sullen son to bond with any human being at all, Alicia rather quickly hypothesized after about five minutes in his company. She’d still been polite to the surly boy, though; something Nick had predictably been unwilling to do.

Travis had made the blended family hamburgers, served on buns made using his own special recipe for rēwena. It was a bread made from fermented potatoes that had tasted like it, Nick had muttered under his breath. Alicia hadn’t particularly disagreed, necessarily, but she also hadn’t felt like that was a bad thing; she liked it better than the buns they usually got from Whole Foods.

Travis had also made a pot of something he called 'boil-up' that consisted of pork meat and bones, puha, and kūmara, and smelled prettydivine. It was a traditional Māori dish, he’d explained, but he wouldn’t be insulted if nobody wanted to try it; he knew it was a bit odd to them, but he loved his culture. Alicia hadn’t known at the time—and still didn’t, if she was honest with herself—what two of those things were, but she’d helped herself to a big bowl of it while smiling sweetly back at the duo of teenage testosterone spills glaring daggers at her from across the table.

It was worth it, to see the smile of relief cross Madison’s lips; the glimmer of tears in her eyes as she gazed upon her only daughter with something approaching a near reverence. Alicia had been grateful for the admittedly delicious distraction of Travis showing her how to suck the tender marrow from the cores of the boiled bones, otherwise she might not have avoided tearing up herself as well. Not, as her mother was, because she, too saw some weird beautiful future where the fracture of their family had healed, and Nick was no longer a drug-obsessed Problem Child, and Alicia had gotten early acceptance to Berkeley with a full scholarship.

No, Alicia would have cried for the loss she suddenly felt vibrating throughout her body. She couldn’t name what it was, precisely, that she had lost; she only knew in that moment, her mother had placed a golden halo upon her delicate sixteen year old head, with no earthly idea of how truly heavy the crown would be. Would Madison still have done so—bestowed halo and harp on her progeny—had she known the true cost of it?

The dichotomy was born then, too; in fact, a number of them were.Manawa vs. Clark, Nick vs. Madison, Chris vs. Everybody. And of course, the devil/saint duo everyone loved to compare: Nick vs. Alicia. Problem Chil vs. Golden Child.

A Problem Child like Nick was, like Chris was rapidly becoming. As Madison and Travis’s love—which rightly, none of the children had ever _truly_ questioned—blossomed, the boys withered in perfect righteous, enraged, cadence.

Nick played his part well, bemoaning the memory of their father as an excuse to do molly with his friends instead of picking Alicia up from soccer practice.

She’d sat alone in the field for three hours before she gave up and spent the fourth hour and another half walking home. When Madison asked where she’d been, she’d lied for Nick without taking so much as a breath, already halfway up the stairs when she tossed behind her, "Study group. I left early. They were screwing around too much, so I gotta go make up for it now. Love ya, bye."

She’d closed her bedroom door—perhaps a bit harder than necessary, but not by much, _not enough to be noticeable_ , which had become her war cry at this point—before she could hear Madison’s distracted, "Love you too, sweetie."

Madison never mentioned the incident to Alicia again, but she’d definitely known that her daughter had covered for Nick. She’d screamed at Nick about it several times afterwards, using it as the golden standard example of his irresponsibility, and ongoing verification of Alicia’s sainthood.

The weight of the halo crown Madison had unwittingly saddled Alicia with became heavier and heavier the more intricate and complicated the web of Clark family life grew.

When Nick graduated from a bong to a needle. When Travis moved in and began participating in the bi-weekly Nick hunting sessions across the seediest places L.A.’s Eastside had to offer. When Madison had had a breakdown at work in front of an office full of students, because they’d found Nick unconscious in a park, and if he survived, he would be spending some time in lockup.

When Nick fucked off out of rehab, and then did it again, and again. When Chris stayed out all night, and Madison and Travis had to go looking for both of the boys at the same time, they’d left Alicia with a kiss upon each of her pale, high cheeks and fifty dollars for pizza and entertainment they knew she wouldn’t use.

After stuffing the money in the house’s _Rainy Day Fund_ , Alicia sat on the couch—as she preferred to do when the house was empty—and flipped on the television. She scrolled the guide without really looking, and finally settled on a channel airing _Breakfast at Tiffany’s_. Once upon a time, it had been her dream to put on a decadent evening gown and enjoy a warm pastry—or perhaps a bottle of wine—while gazing longingly into the display window at Tiffany&Co. She dreamt of getting her own apartment, and perhaps adopting a nameless stray Cat like Holly Golightly had, in a glimmering city, far away from the chaos and destruction that closed in on her here in L.A. like the lid of a sweltering casket.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go to Berkeley; on the contrary, she’d dreamed of it for practically forever. But after that, she felt, she would move farther away maybe, and live the dream. After, she would be more prepared to leave her family. Not because she was afraid to be truly on her own, a country away from everything she knew. No, she was afraid to leave her family alone, knowing that Madison at the very least would entirely self destruct without her own personal lord and savior to pray to in the face of all the hell that continually broke loose in the wake of Nick’s chaotic existence.

Alicia curled her knees close to her chest, carefully balancing the plate of left over lasagna on a throw pillow, and settled in to zone out to one of her favorite films.

Maybe if she immersed herself in a fictional world long enough, she too would forget about the untouched ice cream cake they’d gotten to celebrate, as it lay melting and dripping off the kitchen counter. Maybe she could forget about the acceptance letter to Berkeley that lay next to it, soaking up the chocolate chip vanilla ice cream as it swirled a stain across the width of the page.

Maybe she could forget about herself as they had, too.

👱🏻♀️ ♾ 👩🏻

"And then what happened?"

Alicia pulled the sleeping bag tighter around her shoulders and head, turning herself into a tiny forest-green lump of a mountain. Only her face peeked out, and the heat of the dancing flames between them licked her cheeks affectionately as she waited eagerly for Clarke to continue the tale.

"We could hear the warning horns, saw the yellow acid fog rolling towards us. Suddenly, Finn opens up this door in the ground, and it’s that stupid _car_ , the one we found earlier, just buried there in the ground. So we dropped into it, and he found this like, ancient bottle of booze inside. So Finn offers it to me, and he’s going on about how it’s a rite of passage or whatever, but he obviously doesn’t expect me to take it. And Wells is like," Clarke’s voice took on a deeper timbre, and her impression of Wells Jaha was absolutely dead-on—not that Alicia knew the difference, of course. "Alcohol is toxic, we’ll pass."

Alicia’s eyes widened a little. "Ooh, 'we’ will, huh? If you weren’t gonna drink before, you sure the hell are now."

Clarke chuckled lightly. "Exactly. So, you know. I just give him this _look_ , and of course he knows exactly why, 'cause he’s dumb, but he’s not stupid. And I just snatch the bottle outta Finn’s hand and take this big ole gulp of it. Like, fuck both of 'em, you know? I’ll show you how it’s done."

"Boys." Alicia smirked understandingly, taking a sip from her jar. "Did you boot in front of them?"

"Nah," Clarke waved her hand dismissively. "I mean, I’m surprised, honestly. it was pretty uh, potent by then. Finn said he thought it was whiskey? Whatever it was, it tasted a lot better by the second gulp and even better by the third, that’s all I know. Felt pretty good by then, too." Clarke punctuated the end of her story with another drink from her moonshine jar, then set it down. "Okay, your turn."

Alicia made some sort of a muted grunting noise combined with a whine. "Do I _have_ to?"

"Fair’s fair," Clarke pointed out, carefully lifting the top off the pot that hung over the fire on a rusted tripod. She stirred the ramen noodles, ducking her head slightly to inhale the smoke wafting off of the chicken-flavored soup. Her mouth was already beginning to water in a remarkably Pavlovian way at the scent, and she unconsciously licked her lips before covering the pot once more.

"God, your love for ramen is seriously the most convincing aspect of your story, you know that?" Alicia replied, making a face. "I’m like, three, four days away from choosing starvation over more of this crap. What I wouldn’t give for just one more good, old fashioned New York strip steak."

Clarke smiled internally at that, but decided to let John have the pleasure of surprising her on that point.

"Maybe we can go cow hunting later," she suggested, only half kidding. Alicia merely snorted at the idea, but not in a cruel sort of way. More like she probably couldn’t imagine Clarke crouching in the woods, silently stalking a feral former livestock. Frankly, Clarke had more than a little trouble imagining it as well, but she couldn’t see Alicia doing so any better, so she joined Alicia in a good-natured laugh at their own expense.

"Come on, Leesha. I’m not drunk enough to forget you owe me a story yet, so," Clarke made a ' _let’s go_ ' motion with her hand, raising her eyebrows at the other girl, who groaned again.

"Okay, okay. So, the first time I ever drank was also the first time Nick got himself arrested, but one had nothing to do with the other. At least, not until—well, I’ll get to that part."

Alicia was a good storyteller, too, and Clarke found herself relaxing as she sipped from the jar of rotgut. It, combined with the warmth from the fire and the somehow-sweet cadence of Alicia’s voice was making her feel fuzzy and unfettered for the first time in—hell, who even knew how long?

Alicia had gone to a party with her boyfriend at the time, and discovered the danger of mixed drinks that actually tasted good. Stumbling and slurring and two hours past curfew, she’d tried to sneak inside her house, hoping to go to her bedroom and sleep off the rest of her drunkenness as well as the inevitable first hangover she would surely begin experiencing before dawn.

But she needn’t have worried, because the house was empty. Madison had gone down to the Hollenbeck Community Police Station to retrieve Nick, who had been picked up for public intoxication, trespassing, and possession. They’d dropped the charges after some sweet-talking by guidance counselor Madison—luckily, the police chief’s son was also a Troubled Kid, as they put it, and had regular meetings with Madison.

One hand washed the other, and Nick walked away from a pile of shit smelling like roses, as he usually did.

Alicia’s tale ended rather abruptly, and the girls sat quietly for a moment or two, before Clarke glanced up at her.

"Do you always do that?" she asked quietly.

Alicia furrowed her brow quizzically. "Do what?"

"Turn your stories into Nick stories," Clarke replied simply, without an ounce of accusation in her voice.

Alicia slowly lowered the jar she’d been about to sip from again, her face unreadable as she stared back at Clarke. "I don’t; I didn’t."

"Yes, you did. I mean, it started out being about the first time you got drunk, but then it was about Nick getting in trouble. Not that I don’t want to hear about Nick," Clarke rushed to add, realizing that she was probably pissing the other girl off again. "I do, honestly. But I’m more interested in hearing about you, Alicia."

Alicia looked like someone had pulled the rug from beneath her feet and she’d only just noticed. There was some confusion, perhaps an ounce of realization, and then, there in the darkest of depths behind her ocean emerald eyes, there was something like appreciation sparkling.

"You are?"

"Well.. Yeah," Clarke responded, shaking her head a little. "I know you’re not exactly my biggest fan, but.. I like you. You’re smart, you’re funny without trying. You’re even way less of a tight-ass when you’re sauced, and I want to know more. Why else would I build you a fire, get you booze, feed you noodles, and ask you to tell me stories?"

Alicia blushed deeply at all of that, looking away from the blonde with her cheeks burning a deep crimson, even in the pale moonlight. "I dunno," she mumbled.

"Yes, you do," Clarke replied quietly, setting her jar aside to check the noodles again. She left it at that, though; she could see no benefit to browbeating the point home. When Alicia seemed to smile softly to herself, it felt like a prize; Clarke immediately committed the image to memory, clutching the win close to her heart with a warmth even more intense than that the fire was giving off.

All of Alicia’s smiles, it seemed, would be hard fought and won, and so Clarke was determined to hang onto the rare gems with everything she had. She’d _earned_ those elusive, enchanting smiles.

Alicia was just studying her appreciatively, her sharp edges seemingly dulled—for the moment, anyway—while chewing on her pinkie fingernail with purpose. As if she were mulling something over; trying to decide about something.

_Or_ _maybe_ , a tiny part of Clarke’s brain that was particularly annoying, whispered tauntingly, _maybe she’s trying to decide about some_ ** _one_**.

Clarke, for her part, decided that it wasn’t her concern until and unless Alicia made it so, and she set her focus on unhooking the now-cooked pot of soup from the beaten up cooking tripod instead. It was a good thing, actually; she was pretty wobbly from the moonshine, and falling in the fire would just be embarrassing at this point.

"You were going to tell me how your first time drunk was tied to Nick getting arrested," Clarke gently prompted, separating the soup into two of John’s insulated Thermoses as neatly as she could.

"Oh, right. Well, now it sounds kinda lame, but I just—of course, I didn’t get caught, because I didn’t even see anyone until I’d gotten through the hangover and a day of school. I think my mom probably died thinking I was a virgin who never touched a substance in my life."

"I think all moms probably die hoping that," Clarke pointed out, shuddering internally to picture Madi going into her dating years in a world like Alicia had. "And you only think it sounds lame _now_? Ooh, Alicia had two drinks and didn’t get caught.. Watch out, we've got a real badass over here.."

Clarke mimed putting her hands up in surrender, and Alicia gasped with mock offense, swatting at the blonde with the corner of the sleeping bag she was curled up in. "You’re just _mean_. Like you’re such a rebel, drinking expired whiskey in buried cars with boys.. That’s a.. A real life of lawlessness, Clarke Griffin."

Clarke’s blue eyes widened impossibly and she let out a surprised chuff as Alicia continued to laugh at her expense. "Oh, now you’ve done it," she threatened, nudging the other girl playfully.

"Oh, no.. What’s big bad Clarke gonna do, cripple my other leg?" Alicia taunted, and then in a remarkably immature display even for someone with half a jar of potent hooch in them, she stuck her tongue out at Clarke.

"Oh my god, you’re like a five year old," Clarke teased. "I’ll have you know I’ve done _plenty_ of rebellious stuff, okay?"

"Oh, I’m sure," Alicia intoned in mock solemnity, helping herself to a sip of her water bottle. Her eyebrows knit together, her lips puckering out exaggeratedly as she nodded slowly, looking very serious. "What, did big bad Clarke-y steal from mom’s purse? No, you wore bright red lipstick to school, right? Wait, no. I’ve got it. You broke curfew to go somewhere bad with a boy," Alicia guessed slightly, her lashes fluttering at Clarke over her jar.

Clarke laughed softly, handing over one of the Thermoses carefully. "Well, we used a credits system, so stealing from Mom was a no-go. I tried to use her swipe-card once, when I was like nine, and all kinds of alarms went off. I thought they were gonna send me to the Skybox right then and there."

"Hm," Alicia hummed over the Thermos, her eyes not meeting Clarke’s.

"No closer to believing my story, huh?" Clarke asked, but good-naturedly.

Alicia shrugged a little, holding up two fingers about an inch apart from one another. "Maybe just a teeny, tiny bit closer."

"Yeah? What does that mean, like, you buy that I’m from outer space, just not from the future or—" Clarke began teasingly.

Alicia rolled her eyes. "I’m working on a theory that maybe you were raised in a really weird tech-obsessed cult of some kind, and they like, _told_ you it was outer space. You know, like those poor girls from the polygamy cults that are all brainwashed from birth to think everything outside the cult’s evil. That’s kinda where I’m at with you right now. Explains why you were wandering around that walker-infested shithole alone, too."

That one actually gave Clarke pause momentarily, her lagging drunken eyes searching the sky above them, as if it would somehow hold some truths for her. Alicia’s suggestion wasn’t any more crazy than Clarke’s reality had been, and was a chillingly familiar concept to A.L.I.E.’s very own City of Light.

However, Clarke could already tell that ruminating on it for too long was a road leading to likely madness. No, better not to think too hard about that; half the people Clarke knew on this planet so far already thought she was crazy; the other half had merely decided to stop asking questions. One paranoid drunken outburst could mean she’d be sleeping on the other side of The Dorie River, as she’d begun to think of it, for the safety of all.

It reminded Clarke of the paranoia some of the more colorful herbs on the Ark could induce; perfectly rational people suddenly going off the deep end, convince that all life was a simulation of some sort, or a hologram. They’d freak out for hours down in medical, crying to anyone who would listen that it was all a lie, a hallucination.

Combined with her previous status as merely a digital expression of the _Individual Consciousness Code_ of one Clarke Abigail Griffin, Alicia’s joke had hit a little too close to home, and it was causing sweat to bead on Clarke’s brow and behind her ears.

"Wow," Alicia noted quietly. "You just did like, a whole thing inside your head just now, didn’t you? I could see the hamsters running on the wheels behind your eyes," she teased gently.

Clarke bit her lip, looking back at her quietly. She knew it was the alcohol, but the idea of her entire existence—strange as it was—being faked, had settled an uneasy stone inside her gut, and she swallowed hard, trying to breathe past the lump in her throat.

"I—uh, I’m sorry. I—" Clarke fumbled for the words to explain what was happening in her head, but she couldn’t seem to locate them.

Alicia grew solemn quickly, and she slid a bit closer, her voice taking on a gentle tone that was as yet unfamiliar in this world.

"It’s okay. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have joked about that." She paused then, and sighed, rubbing her face tiredly. "Look, I.. I don’t know about your story, Clarke. I’m just being honest, you know? But what I _do_ know is that.. Wherever you came from, whatever happened to you, it was really fucked up and traumatic, and I’m not gonna make you keep defending yourself."

Clarke studied her unsurely, a deep stabbing pain taking over her chest when she saw the light of Lexa’s kindness shining through Alicia’s eyes. It quickly drew tears the corners of her own baby blues, and she tried to wipe them away.

"Thanks," Clarke managed to reply, though her whispered voice fractured halfway through.

"Clarke," Alicia said softly, shifting even closer to her in the dancing glow of the fire. Her eyes searched Clarke’s soulfully, and her wide-eyed gaze was undeniably powerful as she took her measure of the blonde.

Their shared, locked look lingered so long that under different circumstances, it would’ve grown uncomfortable and awkward. But in this world, in this moment, with things being what they were, instead the sensation of a shared sort of pain began to thicken the air. The trees that surrounded them, the chilly breeze of the night air, and the glowing light of the moon began to close in, oppressively heavy on both of them, even through the haze of the moonshine. Clarke could practically see the tendrils of human connection, spiraling and winding their spindle arms between herself and Alicia, compelling them towards one another by unfathomable mystical means; a feeling more primal and desperate than Clarke had felt in a very, _very_ long time.

It terrified her; made her feel sick to her stomach. But it also made her feel warm in some very neglected places—not the least of which being a microscopic seed of affection, and lust, and a growing need burning deep in the core of her heart.

Clarke’s heart pounded out a drumline in her weighted chest, her blood rushing with a rhythmic, hollow sort of thumping in her ears. She felt feverish and delirious, her eyes flicking back and forth between either of Alicia’s with the speed and intensity of a wildfire. The actual fire crackled beside them, their meal suddenly forgotten in the rising heat of an equally base need.

Clarke closed her eyes as Alicia’s lips brushed gently over hers, uncomfortably aware that every barrier she’d put up to keep the girl at a far enough distance to forget just how _almost-Lexa_ she was, all came tumbling down at once like a house in a hurricane.

Clarke responded instinctually, her lips chasing after Alicia’s; seeking more of the sweet warmth she’d found there. She tasted like forgiveness and second chances, like hope and courage. Best and worst of all, she tasted like Lexa, and the tears that had begun to form in Clarke’s eyes moments ago released, summoning several more friends along for the journey.

Clarke couldn’t care less in that moment. Her tongue danced at the seam of Alicia’s lips, gently requesting entrance, and Alicia obliged, tilting her head as she leaned into Clarke, their bodies unfurling in the cold night as they pressed into one another.

Alicia moaned softly in the back of her throat as Clarke took her time with the kiss. Searching out the small crevices and creases that hid all her secrets, her tongue rapidly mapping the rounded edges of Alicia’s teeth, the soft undulating muscle of her tongue, the hidden pools of saliva, growing as Clarke drank from her thirstily.

Alicia moved then. Having seemingly forgotten about both Clarke’sand her own injuries, her quest to crawl into Clarke’s lap generated a painful reminder when Alicia’s rib gave an ugly, angry _pop._

_"Augh,_ " Alicia cried involuntarily against Clarke’s lips, grabbing her side as she broke the kiss and folded in on herself, clutching her side. "Oh, jesus mother _fucking_ christ on a goddamn cracker!"

Utterly thrown by everything that had happened in the previous several minutes (or, honestly, hours), and Alicia’s creative string of cursing, Clarke rested her hand on her shoulder gently as she, too, was reminded of Alicia’s broken rib.

"Oh, man. Alicia? Are you okay?"

"I’m _fantastic_ ," Alicia replied; but she’d curled into a ball and brought the back of her sleeping bag down over her head, and her voice was muffled as she appeared to be chewing on her own coat sleeve in an attempt to regain control over her own body.

Understandably, Clarke didn’t quite believe her.

"Here, take this," she instructed, shaking several painkillers into her hand and offering them to the brunette. "You’re way overdue, I’m so sorry. I should’ve been watching the clock," she continued apologetically, holding out a bottle of water. "Or, I guess being a little more careful with my chest compressions."

Alicia took the bottle, but looked up at her from within her blanket cocoon with only one eye visible. "Shut up. I’d rather have a busted rib than a date with my maker. You saved my _life_ , Clarke. Quit apologizing for it."

"No promises, but I’ll try." Mollified, Clarke sat back a little, her lips still tingling where Alicia’s had been enthusiastically exploring them just moments ago. Alicia didn’t respond again; merely curled up inside her sleeping bag while she waited for the medication to kick in, and Clarke took a dose herself as she rolled out the extra blankets and bedrolls she’d dragged outside earlier.

Her hip was killing her, but not—it seemed, anyway—literally; at least not yet. She figured another day or so, and she’d be able to leave the remaining pills for Alicia, who would certainly need them a great deal longer.

When she’d set up both of their bedrolls, Clarke rested back in one of John Dorie’s large coats, clutching the edge of the sleeping bag near her waist and closing her eyes. She fought against the heaviness of her eyelids as long as she could; she wanted to att least make sure the pills had worked for Alicia, and maybe even see the girl off to sleep before she turned in herself.

But the truth was that Clarke hadn’t slept a wink since her post-hurricane light coma, and she knew she’d made a mistake the instant she lay down. Her head hit the pillow, the booze hit her brain, the kiss hit her lips and put a slightly dreamy smile on them, and her eyes locked shut as sleep began to rapidly pull the exhausted girl deep under the soothing waves of slumber.

Barely a foot away, Alicia watched from a loosened version of her cocoon, her eyes scanning every inch of the girl as she was gently carried off to sleep. Alicia leaned over—carefully, this time—and gently pulled the sleeping bag further up over Clarke, tucking it beneath her arm with care.

"Goodnight, Clarke," she whispered to the already-dreaming blonde.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Never, ever mix heavy drinking with painkillers, please! Especially in the apocalypse, and definitely avoid it if you just spent several days in a coma. :3 Be safe & be kind to each other and yourselves!


	8. The Replacements

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dreams, hangovers, emotions, John Dorie being perfect, steak & eggs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a tiny bit of Trigedasleng in this chapter, but I have included the translations inline.
> 
> Shout out to my little sister, [Eliza Storms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElizaStorms/pseuds/ElizaStorms) for her assistance with butcher-y type stuff.

I am talkin' in my sleep  
Hidin' inside my dreams  
Fighting inside my head  
Scarin' myself to death

We live in a wonderland  
Like blood isn't on our hands  
When will it be enough?

Can't live forever with my head in the clouds  
Can't predict the weather with my feet on the ground

You tell me that we'll be alright  
But I don't know if you're right

\- CHVRCHES, "Wonderland"

**The Replacements**

Clarke sat on Lexa’s throne, but also somehow remained hovering over it simultaneously.

She watched herself from a birds-eye view as seizures racked her limp body; as Murphy pumped Ontari’s heart with a look of sickened determination on his face. His worried gaze flickered between Clarke and Abby repeatedly, and tried diligently to avoid looking at Ontari’s opened chest cavity or the copious amounts of blood covering his hands and everything else in the vicinity.

"I am glad you found a suitable replacement," Lexa, who was very suddenly standing beside her, said quietly. 

"Replacement? For what?" Clarke asked in confusion, glancing between her dying body and Lexa.

"For me," Lexa replied matter-of-factly.

Clarke felt her heart shatter inside her chest, the fragile dams of her eyes bursting in sync and releasing the first few tears carelessly. "There’s no replacement for you, Lexa." 

"Alicia seems.. more than sufficient," Lexa finally decided on.

Clarke frowned. "She’s not a replacement, Lexa. There’s no such thing. I just—I.." Clarke trailed off. Truthfully, she had no idea what she _just_ ; no clue what to say to Lexa. 

No clue how she felt about Alicia, or their kiss, or what it seemed to mean regarding Lexa’s memory and any hopes she might have been harboring about getting back to her old world; her own world. The one where there was no Lexa; not anymore. Of course, this world didn’t have a Lexa either, but Clarke had very recently gotten a reminder that what it _did_ have was Lexa’s face; just on someone very different that she was also growing to care for despite herself. But certainly that didn’t mean she was seeking a _replacement_ for—

"Clarke," Lexa chided gently. "I know. That is not how I meant it. I am not angry, or hurt; honestly, I am relieved. I'm gone, _Klark_." 

Clarke turned her gaze to her at that and quickly realized Lexa's own brilliant verdant eyes were glassy with unshed tears threatening to release. 

"I'm gone, now," Lexa repeated sadly, reaching out to cup Clarke's cheek with reverence. "Two worlds, now, with you in them. And I am unable to be in either one," she added; a bit of bitterness and perhaps resentment towards the universe woven into the sadness.

Clarke let out a muffled sob, wrapping her arms around Lexa and burying her face in her sweet, honey-spice-scented hair. 

"I don’t want any of this," Clarke cried softly into the cavern of her tresses. "I just want you." 

"I know, my love. I want you, too. But it's just not so. And I don’t want you to be lonely; to be forever in mourning."

"Too bad," Clarke replied petulantly, clinging to her tighter. "Because I will be. I’ll die alone and missing you with every single cell, every breath, every thought. I’ll never move on from you, Lexa, because I don’t want to."

Lexa smiled in that soft way she had always done when she thought Clarke was being ridiculous about something—a not-infrequent occurrence, truthfully. She affectionately rubbed Clarke’s back, holding her to her chest in all of the most comforting ways she knew how.

"Don’t say that. Please? If I had held to that desire for isolation and misery so tightly after I lost Costia, I would have missed out on loving you, Clarke." Lexa’s voice was soft, but reassuring when she said so, and Clarke reflexively shuddered with a soft, shaky exhale. " _Beja, hodnes_ ; don’t use me as an excuse to run away from a chance at happiness."

_[Please, love;]_

👱🏻 ♾ 👩🏻

Clarke woke up crying.

Her cheeks glistened with the evidence of her grief; of her heartbreak. She quickly turned her head away to wipe it when she realized Alicia was laying facing her. Looking at her face would simply be too much just then. She focused her gaze on the lightly smoldering remains of their campfire and the nearly empty jars of moonshine that lay nearby. 

Her head was predictably pounding like thunderclaps, her mouth fuzzy and drier than _Sangeda_ , and she fumbled around for her canteen. 

_[The desert]_

A sudden loud rattling sound shook Clarke from the daze of her dreams, and she startled as she rolled to her back once more, facing the bottle of pills being held over her. Alicia's face was buried in her pillow, but the traces of a grimace were evident across the visible swath of her cheek. 

What Clarke meant to say was _thank you_ , or _bless you and all your descendants_ , or even just _yes_.

What came out was a groan of, " _Mmphrgh_ ," in the cadence of what Clarke imagined to be _sick, slowly dying animal_. Honestly, that's about how she was feeling, so it was a rather fitting, if unintelligible and purposeless, response. She swallowed the pills both dry and gratefully, putting the bottle down beside Alicia's cringing face. 

"How you doin', Walker Bait?" Alicia mumbled out of the side of both her mouth and sleeping bag. Clarke rolled her eyes at the nickname that was clearly sticking around—and clearly far less cool than _Wanheda_. She finally laid her head down again to stop the pounding inside it, resigning herself to meeting one tired but still bright emerald eye when it sought her. 

"I'm fine. Worried about the look on your face, mostly, since you look like you're thinking of different ways to kill yourself right now," Clarke replied bluntly. 

"Nah, just picking from my top three choices," the brunette shot back smoothly, grunting as she shifted and revealed the rest of her face. 

Clarke's heart shattered in her throat as Lexa's voice echoed inside the darkened, tortured labyrinths of her mind. 

_Replacement_.

Clarke wasn't a fool, and was well trained as a medical responder; she knew a thing or two about human function. So she knew it was only her own mind, playing tricks on her in the form of her beloved fallen _Heda_. Lexa was gone, and therefore very unable to make those kinds of accusations; any accusations at all, really. 

_But what if..?_

Clarke herself had come from the Flame. Lexa had been there as well, and so who was to say that part of her hadn't been dragged into this world with Clarke? Who was to say whether Clarke's love had let her hold onto her lover with a grip so tight that she'd pulled part of Lexa's _Individual Consciousness Code_ right out of the mindspace and straight into another universe? Who was to say that love couldn’t break through the boundaries of time, space, life, death, geography, and emotional trauma, and leap into the chaotic mysteries of the cosmos to save the day?

The one percent of Clarke that wanted desperately to believe that love could produce miracles would be haunted for all eternity by that question, she knew. 

"Well," Alicia said gently, her voice soft, but startling to Clarke in her current state nonetheless. "Now _I'm_ worried about the look on _your_ face."

"What? No, sorry. Just.. I am hungover as hell," Clarke covered. Alicia lifted one perfect eyebrow, clearly not buying it; but she didn't say anything. Suddenly, Alicia's face changed to an expression of incredulity and desire, and it took mere moments before Clarke's expression matched. 

"Do.. do you smell that, too, or am I crazy?" Alicia asked, looking genuinely concerned behind her wide eyes as she looked around for the source. 

"Oh, I smell it. You're not crazy. Well, not 'cause of this, anyway," Clarke teased lightly, just as the door to the cabin opened. John Dorie stood on the porch, ten gallon hat firmly in place despite the sun barely having begun to rise. He was smiling a little as he looked over the girls.

"Well, aren’t you two beautiful blossoms just a fine sight for these sore old eyes," he announced, stepping down to the top porch step. The girls both smiled as they pushed themselves up slowly from their bedrolls.

"Good morning, John," Clarke smiled, but felt suddenly nervous as she noticed the empty mason jars in the grass. She didn’t think he’d mind, but she also didn’t know him that well, and they hadn’t exactly asked permission first. Honestly, who knew what kind of special attachments a cowboy might have to his homebrew? But it turned out she needn't have worried. John addressed Alicia, who was rubbing her sore side unconsciously, her smile infected with light traces of a grimace as she did so.

"I imagine you’re both feeling a little rode-hard-and-put-away-wet at this particular time, given the amount of 'shine in your systems. I thought you could use a little liquid recovery," he explained, holding out two Thermoses to the girls. "It’s black, I apologize, but it’s been a hot dog of a minute or two since I’ve laid eyes on a packet of Sweet-&-Low."

Clarke blinked as she took the container gratefully, and Alicia was even unable to stifle a little moan of pleasure.

Coffee.

"Thank you," Alicia told him sincerely. Clarke, who had already unscrewed the top and poured a not-insignificant amount of scalding hot coffee directly down the back of her throat, gave a sharp gasp of agreement that didn’t really sound like anything, but John Dorie seemed quite clear on her meaning, and gave her a hat tip in lieu of _you're welcome_. 

"Breakfast will be ready in just a couple minutes here, assuming the eggs ever cook. They're whooping crane eggs, believe it or not. Big ole suckers, real slow to cook. Anyway, if you lovely creatures want to just go ahead and mosey on inside before the skies open up.." he suggested, glancing up. 

Both girls lifted their heads to the sky, which though bright with the rising sun, was also grey and heavy with the threat of torrential downpours. Clarke unintentionally shuddered when she realized it, flashing briefly back to the hurricane and the intensity of the fear that had accompanied it, but she shook it off quickly.

"Alicia, why don’t you go in? I’ll pick up out here and be right behind you?" Clarke offered. Alicia looked like she was about to argue, but Clarke—being well-versed in the way of arguing with such experts as Lexa, Bellamy, Octavia, and Raven—continued quickly. She'd long since learned the best way to avoid an argument was preventing the other person from talking until she felt like they agreed with her enough to move on to something else. 

"You’ve got a broken rib and you’ve been unconscious for days. Don't be an idiot, and go eat, would you?" Clarke insisted, shooing Alicia with her hand like a bothersome fly. Alicia then turned to John as if for help, but found only a gentle smile and stern look in his eyes. 

"Petula’s right," he informed her unapologetically. "Go on, I’ll help Clarke clean up out here, if you’ll just let June know she’s on egg duty for the foreseeable future. Which could be quite a bit of time, thanks to the whooping crane. You could let her know that's why, too, if you wouldn't mind too much. That is one," he put his hands up, quite far apart as he emphasized with wide eyes, " _Large_ , aggressive-type bird, I don't mind telling you. No wonder its eggs are so stubborn."

Alicia couldn’t help a tiny smile, but she looked at the house nervously, then back at Clarke, seemingly for help.

Clarke swallowed thickly at her expression, but just reassured her softly, "It’ll be okay."

"I—I have a question," Alicia finally responded, after a moment of chewing and working her lower lip between her teeth. "Is—"

"Charlie already took her breakfast and went ahead out back," John replied kindly, but his eyes looked vaguely troubled. "Tried to convince the little bug we could all sit and break bread together like people just fine, but she insisted she wanted to watch the sun rise. Wouldn't even wait for the eggs, but maybe she's just not a fan of whooping cranes."

Clarke’s heart ached for the man; he was trying so hard to make the best of a terrible situation, of a terrible world; but it was practically as worrisome as it was refreshing. She knew that sooner or later, that pleasant smile and easygoing attitude would change significantly under the never-ending pressure of living in a world after it had ended. Living under constant siege from the Outside, from the Others—be those dead or alive Others.

Sooner or later, (or perhaps even someday?) John Dorie would wake up a different person; one who had seen too much darkness and finally held too much aftermath inside his heart for any more bright smiles or dad jokes. He would grow and change and harden, just like everyone else. Just like they all had to do to survive in the longterm.

Or, perhaps still worse than that, he would stay a kind, gentle, cowboy. And then he would undoubtedly meet the same sort of messy and completely undeserved end that anyone who dared to try to stay kind, who dared to try to stay human in the aftermath of an apocalypse, tended to meet.

Wells. Finn, Lincoln, Luna..

 _Lexa_.

Lexa had died for caring too much, too. If that wasn't proof that being soft in a sharp world was deadly, then what more possibly _could_ be?

The thought turned her stomach, but there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing, anyway, other than think of who she’d been on the drop ship, and who she’d been within mere days after it had landed, anyway. She still got mind-spun at times, thinking about how rapidly and often her life had changed on a significant level since she’d discovered the O2 scrubbers on the Ark were failing. 

Alicia’s cheeks flushed. "Oh.. Um, okay. I—I’m sorry, I actually meant—is it possible that I smell something smokey and meaty that is _not_ corpses being burned?"

John glanced to Clarke quickly at that, a knowing smile spreading across his brightening face as he realized Clarke hadn’t spoiled the surprise. 

"Alicia, not only is it quite possible, I can in fact confirm for you that today’s breakfast will be a delightful spread of some prime porterhouse ribeye, eggs, and home fries."

Alicia was merely staring at him in shock, her face completely blank as she blinked slowly, struck stupid with disbelief. Clarke and John shared a smile with one another as a look of intensity overtook the brunette.

Her eyes slowly met John Dorie’s, and her voice was quiet but firm as she asked, "Are you shitting me?"

"No, ma’am. I can assure you, I would not shit you about a porterhouse," Dorie informed her kindly, but also quite firmly. "Not much out there I take more seriously than that."

"I feel the same way about a wagyu picanha," Alicia began extricating herself from her bedroll with a dreamy, drunken look on her face. "I would die for a wagyu, even if I had to eat it raw." Alicia punctuated her statement by biting her lip in a way that made Clarke blush and Dorie laugh.

"That's a fair way to feel," he replied, his eyes twinkling with amusement. "I myself could say the same about a solid hanger steak. Criminally underrated cut of beef, right there. Comes from the short plate, you know, the underside of the beast. Rightabouts here or so, I'd say," he directed the explanation to both of the girls, who listened and watched with interest as he gestured on his torso where the meat had come from.

"Anyway, that muscle doesn't do a whole lot of work, so it's tender as all get-out and twice as tasty, but you only get one per animal. Not exactly something easy to stock up on, either back then or now," he added wistfully. 

Alicia and Clarke exchanged a smile, and Alicia turned to John, offering, "I had hanger steak once, and it was amazing. My stepdad Travis used it in a boil-up with watercress and blanched poroporo.." She trailed off, her eyes fluttering closed briefly at the memory.

"Dough boys, too?" John asked, squinting at her just a little.

Alicia rolled her eyes. "Obviously."

"Good man. One who, I’m sure, would want you to head inside and let June feed you, check your, uh, _this_ out." He tapped his head roughly where Alicia’s wound was. "She’s been waiting a few days for a chance to take care of you. I think she’s got a few nurturing-type feelings working at stacking up into worry. She could use someone to dote on a little, if you’d be kind enough to indulge her. Just let her, you know, fix you a plate, get you some tea and blankets."

Alicia just stared at him for a moment, a mildly confused look on her face as she shifted against the single crutch she’d retrieved at some point during the steak conversation.

"Let me get this straight. I’m being ordered to go inside and eat steak and eggs for the first time in years, and you’d like me to _allow_ myself to be waited on and given blankets while that’s happening?" Alicia asked with an impressive slant to her eyebrow.

"And tea." John Dorie shrugged a little bit. "I know that’s not much your thing, being taken care of. But with your injuries, and then sleeping on the ground, and June seeing danger behind the curtains.."

Alicia swallowed hard, her eyes still locked onto Dorie’s as she addressed Clarke without looking at her. "I need you to know that if I died and this is some sort of an afterlife, I am _so_ _completely_ _fine_ with it. I don’t even care where I am." 

"Understandable," Clarke replied with a chuckle, beginning to collect their dishes and utensils from their campfire meal. It _was_ , though. She could understand Alicia’s desire to be parented, because it was an innately human desire, particularly when you weren’t feeling however you usually felt in life. Having being denied such care, Clarke knew from experience that it became all the more desirable under the right circumstances. 

Almost dying was a pretty good circumstance to justify even someone of Alicia's particular constitution relaxing her normally stringent rules about accepting help of any kind.

"Go get some steak and get off that leg, I’ve got this," Clarke shooed her again. "And use the other crutch."

"You’re a true patriot, and a hero, and I love you," Alicia said quickly, patting Clarke’s head as she stood as quickly as her injuries and hangover would let her. "And I don’t need the other crutch."

She hadn’t meant it, obviously; not really, and Clarke knew that. It was just something you said sometimes. As a joke; when someone did something extraordinary for you, to show in the most melodramatic way possible your utter appreciation for whatever action they took. One time, Monroe had brought Clarke back a small, _highly_ confidential collection of cocoa beans she’d found on a scouting mission. Clarke had responded not only by telling Monroe that she loved her, but had physically lowered herself to one knee and proposed to her, right then and there. 

Of course Alicia hadn’t meant it like that any more than Clarke had meant it when she’d said it to Monroe. They barely knew each other, and what Alicia _did_ know about Clarke, she didn’t believe yet, anyway. 

Still. 

Hearing _those_ words from _those_ lips in _that_ voice.

Hot on the heels of _those_ eyes.. 

And **_that_** dream.

Fine. So maybe Clarke was a little twisted up inside, a little thrown, a little uncomfortable and confused. She just wanted to breathe through the moment so she could move on from it and then promptly forget it ever happened. Preferably before it became another ghost to haunt her dreams and nightmares.

Luckily, Alicia didn’t even notice; she was already disappearing inside the warmth of the cabin. Clarke could practically see the winding tendril fingers of desirable scent curling up under Alicia’s nostrils, drawing her forward like a freshly-baked pie in an old cartoon. Clarke chuckled lightly despite herself, focused on collecting the jars and ramen wrappers. John quietly took a knee beside her, beginning to separate and fold the blankets from Alicia’s bedroll.

"I don’t remember bringing this many blankets out. I couldn’t even _find_ this many blankets. I’m assuming you had something to do with that, so thank you," Clarke said quietly. 

"Wish I could take credit for that particular parental action, but that was all Charlie's doing," Dorie replied as he finished with Alicia’s pile and began helping a slow-moving Clarke with her own. 

"Charlie brought them out?" Clarke paused, her brow furrowing a little bit. That was some unexpected information.

"And covered the both of you, creating the twin cocoons June found this morning," Dorie added lightly. "June was a little worried when she found the house half empty, you understand, and so was Charlie. It wasn't distrust that's kept us checking on you two, is what I'm trying to say."

Clarke flushed slightly with the guilt. She hadn’t even stopped to consider how worried someone might be if they noticed Alicia—who had still been unconscious when they’d all gone to bed; and Clarke, who had been bitten, and could still prove to be a threat in any number of ways—missing at some ungodly hour of the morning. 

"I am so sorry, John. I uh, I couldn’t sleep, so I came out on my own last night, and then Alicia found me when she woke up. I—I told her about Charlie, and she didn’t want to go inside," Clarke explained, feeling terrible inside and resolving to apologize to June and Charlie as well for the disappearing act they’d pulled. Not really the best game to play in an apocalypse; just slightly less stupid than getting blackout drunk in one immediately following a small coma and several moderately severe injuries apiece.

Truthfully, Clarke would have gone full-on Sherriff Griffiin in the face of anyone else for doing the same thing. In fact, she was positive she had done so with an almost startling frequency. Hell, she’d scolded Octavia alone for disappearing without a word on at least _nine_ different occasions, just between the first time they’d met one another inside the dropship, and the start of the Battle of the Mountain; twice on the march to the mountain itself.

"She was afraid to go inside," Clarke corrected herself when Dorie didn’t reply right away. "So we stayed outside."

He stopped mid-fold, resting back on his shins in the dirt as he regarded Clarke quietly. 

"You’re obviously very fond of her. I know first-hand it’s not so easy talking down someone with a stubborn streak the size of the one she's got, and if I might speak frankly..?"

Dorie paused then, and it took Clarke nearly twenty seconds to realize that he was, in fact, asking permission to do so.

"O-of course," Clarke quickly responded. "Please. Frank away." 

"Well, thank you, Petula. And so, I will." Dorie chuckled just a bit, unconsciously touching the brim of his hat as he did. Then his face grew solemn once more, and he held Clarke’s gaze as he spoke quietly.

"You have no reason whatsoever to side with Charlie, or to even care about her side. You don't know her from a hole in the ground, and there's certainly no reason you need to look out for her, much less try to heal the fracture between her and Alicia. Particularly in light of the, uh, the friendship, that you and Alicia have developed." 

The look on his face suggested that even he thought it was more than just a friendship developing, but Clarke tried very hard to dutifully ignore the implications and shove the kiss from her mind as quickly as humanly possible. 

"Anyway, that’s why it means an awful lot to both June and myself that you’ve treated Charlie with care despite what she’s done. It means even more that there’s hope that Alicia will too someday, and I expect we’ll have no one else to thank for that besides you." 

Clarke felt her eyes rapidly filling and her throat constricting around the lump that she suddenly found there. That wasn’t what she’d been expecting, but such shocks seemed to be par for the course when it came to Alicia’s people at this point.

"Thank you again, Clarke." 

If Clarke could speak frankly in the moment, she might be inclined to thank them for showing her that people could still surprise you; that there were still people out there in any and every universe that were trying with all of their might to do good. That there was always a reason to have hope, there was always a chance that something might turn out _sort of, almost, kind of okay_ ; at least every once in awhile.

Clarke supposed she could speak frankly with John Dorie; theoretically, anyway. Mechanically, however, she wasn’t entirely sure that was possible, because her mouth didn't quite seem to want to cooperate.

She decided to give it a shot anyway, thinking she’d start with the fact that, while what Charlie had done was terrible, it wasn’t completely unforgivable. Really, there were so few things that could be classified that way, anyway. The kid had killed someone that it turned out she really hadn't needed to; and frankly Clarke was unsure if anyone on Dorie Island could claim any differently, but she very much doubted it.

The point being, it was a theoretically forgivable action at the time and under the circumstances, and if it wasn't, they were all royally screwed anyway, since they'd all surely done far worse things than Charlie was even _capable_ of. After Clarke pointed that out, she would then go on to say that someday, Alicia would forgive her, because Alicia was trying to heal, too. And then someday even further away than that, Charlie would find it within to be able to forgive herself as well.

Clarke thought she'd add that she hadn't believed it until John Dorie had given her that little pep talk about getting to _someday_ , and things being okay once they did. She thought she'd tell him that she didn't believe him yesterday, but today she _needed_ to believe him. That she was beginning to catch glimpses of little cracks of light all around the edges of the looming door that had held her prisoner in the darkness for so long.

Clarke thought she’d tell John Dorie all of that, and then maybe even more. Maybe she would keep going, and explain her hopelessness; in the process, spilling out confessions of all her darkest secrets. She could tell him about how a misunderstanding and trauma had necessitated her murdering a teenage boy she cared very much about, and how Raven's hopeless wails of utter internal destruction that night still haunted every single one of her worst nightmares. How if she closed her eyes briefly she could still feel the slick, hot blood directly from Finn's heart as it grew cold and sticky on her calloused artist's hands. Hands that had once saved Finn in a wild storm, had then taken back the life she'd given him, and when Raven accused her of playing god, she hadn't even responded. 

What was the point, when she believed Raven was correct about that? Of course, Raven had (for a little while, anyway) believed that Clarke was doing so because she wanted to be in charge, wanted to be in power. Because Clarke was a know-it-all, and maybe she had been harboring some low-key hatred for Raven for showing up to reclaim her boyfriend. 

Raven hadn't understood yet. Not until she stood shaking and bleeding in TonDC, watching the echos of pain on Lexa's face as she did what she thought she must and slid her sword through Gustus' chest like so much melting butter. Raven had been speaking to herself when she'd mumbled, **_that would have been Finn_** ; but she'd done so loudly enough for Clarke to overhear. 

Clarke had never imagined a _someday_ would come where she would think of Raven as her sister; even less so that Raven would feel the same way, picked first or not. 

If that particular someday had come, surely a kid like Charlie still had plenty of somedays laying ahead to be forgiven for her sins.

Clarke thought she might tell John all of that; finally let the weight of her ugly truths fall out of her chest. Let it go into the hands of this man who seemed too wise, too kind, too quietly strong and caring to do anything but finally absolve her of all of the other heinous crimes she’d committed. She thought she might ask John to forgive her the way he had forgiven Charlie; for doing the wrong thing in the name of _trying_. She didn’t really know why, but she knew she wanted forgiveness, and at the moment, she felt like she wanted it from this quirky, gentle sort of man she barely knew, yet would trust with her life. 

She would trust this man with her mother’s life, even. With Lexa's life; with _Madi's_ , for fuck's sake.

There was nothing; simply nothing at all about John Dorie that so much as gave Clarke even half a nanosecond’s worth of pause. Nothing that made her think his motives and intentions were anything at all beyond utterly pure and positive, and in the best interest of every person still left alive in his orbit. 

Clarke opened her mouth to tell him all of that—or at least a tiny fraction of that—but what came out instead, and in a very small, very vulnerable, and barely audible voice was simply, "You remind me of my Dad." 

If she hadn’t been blushing before, she certainly was now. She quickly turned her embarrassed face away from the man in the cowboy hat and boots, ashamed of the childish admission even as it had accidentally passed her lips unobstructed. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him, and hoped with all her heart that he hadn’t heard her. Kind soul or not, she was certain what she’d said was weird, and inappropriate, and immature—however true it was. 

The longer John Dorie went without responding to her admission, the more the anxiety choked off her brainwaves, and Clarke was very nearly shaking with the humiliation of leaving herself so exposed. Much less to someone she knew only by sense, by experience with people. Someone she could still be wrong about, no matter how much her heart and mind told her he was a safe person to be around. People like that were few and far between, after all, and most just seemed that way, but would later be revealed to be just as selfish and ugly inside as everyone else was; as Clarke herself felt. 

After a far-too-long and far-too-awkward minute, Clarke steeled herself and reluctantly dragged her gaze back over to the well-meaning cowboy beside her. 

John Dorie had been in the process of standing up with an armful of blankets when she’d last spoken, and he remained more or less frozen in place. However, it didn’t seem to be because he was thrown off, creeped out, or offended by Clarke’s strange compliment. 

In fact, he looked very much the way her father had, the very first year Clarke had given him a Christmas gift. It was a small plaque that featured an imprint of Clarke’s very own tiny hand. It was a project that Wells’ mother’s had done with the kids, so that Jake and Thelonius would have a little something to bring to the office with them.

A little reminder of what awaited them at home, she’d said to Abby. The women had laughed sadly together at that, and Clarke and Wells had exchanged a glance and then promptly shrugged both sets of narrow, five-year-old shoulders before returning to the brilliantly messy art project. 

"Well," John Dorie finally said, his voice soft and breaking in a way that was, again, new and unexpected. "Not to toot my own horn, but I’ve heard more than a few fine things in my life, and I do believe that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to _or_ about me."

"Thank you, Clarke. I’m honored by that."

He leaned over just slightly, briefly clasping one sturdy hand around Clarke’s shoulder, which felt immeasurably small in his confident, comfortable grip. He gave her shoulder a very gentle squeeze, and then a light pat before pulling his hand back. Clarke’s tongue was too dry in her mouth to reply properly, but she swallowed hard and unconsciously brushed her fingertips over the spot where Dorie had validated her sad little confusing feelings.

"Petula darlin', you must be hungrier than a hostage by now, and I do hate to see a good porterhouse go cold before a first bite’s even been enjoyed. Why don’t you run along inside and grab some breakfast, yourself? I reckon I can manage the rest of the cleanup here, especially after you’ve been caring for Alicia all night like you have."

Somehow, he was both gentle and firm in his statement, and Clarke was far too hungry and confused to even attempt to insist otherwise. 

"Oh, and uh, please let June know I’ll be along in a jiffy, would you?" he added. 

Clarke nodded her head as she stood and brushed the dirt from her knees, her voice wavering. "Will do. Thanks, John."

"Thank you, Clarke."

Clarke spared one more glance towards the cowboy with the heart of gold as he cleaned up, seemingly every bit as intent on putting the world back together as Charlie had been just yesterday. She smiled a little to herself before pulling open the screen door and heading into the cabin.


	9. One Disaster Less

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rainy days & wound care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would apologize for the short length of this chapter, but the next one is a beast. They were one big ole behemoth, so I tried to break it up in a way that kind of made sense and wasn't too jarring. I hope I did okay! 🤞🏻 enjoy 😊

  
It's only one part of the story  
Just let it go, don't let it bring you down now.  
Forget about it, don't let it get you down

Now is not the time, and you're not alone  
Sing the last thing on your mind  
The last word on your breath

I'll be the one to keep you at your best  
I'll be the one to keep you one disaster less  
I'll be okay, if you're okay

\- Lights, " _The Last Thing on Your Mind_ "

**One Disaster Less**

By the time they'd all finished breakfast, Charlie had been driven back inside by the moderate rainfall and was curled up in a pile of blankets in the corner with a book. She was facing the wall with her back to everyone, and Clarke found her eyes drawn to the line of her narrow back and dark, slightly snarled tangle of hair. With the book mere inches from her face, she was the spitting image of Madi, and it was both comforting and incredibly painful.

_When you become a parent, Clarke, it's for life. She's still your daughter, and you're still her mama in every single way that matters._

Clarke swallowed thickly, purposefully looking away from Charlie and casting her eyes around the cabin instead as the rain pinged and splashed off the roof and windows. John sat at the kitchen table with his stocking feet propped up on it. He wore a pair of mismatched socks, one of which appeared to have small cartoon ears of corn on it, while the other was lilac with little smiley faces and peace signs. His hat was tilted down over his face, covering his eyes, and his arms were crossed on his chest as he slouched in the chair with his legs crossed at the ankles.

He was out cold.

Alicia was reading a book on the opposite end of the couch from where Clarke was curled under a blanket against the arm of it.

June had gone outside without commentary several minutes earlier, and when she came back, she had a small bucket in her arms. She stomped her feet on the porch to loosen the mud from her soles, then shrugged off her poncho and hung it over one of the porch chairs. Clarke pushed herself up and gone over to hold the door open for June.

"Thank you," June breezed past her, setting the bucket beside the sink.

"Sure," Clarke replied, leaning over to peek inside the bucket. June smiled at the action, watching the joy on Clarke’s face when she saw the assortment of fresh veggies. "Uh, can I help you with dinner?"

June smirked a little bit. "And by help, you mean..?"

"Eat it all right now and save you the trouble of cooking it at all," Clarke finished without missing a beat.

June laughed then—the first time she’d actually laugh-laughed, as far as Clarke could recall—and it was a pretty pleasant sound. "Well, as helpful as I believe that would be, right now I’d actually like to get at those bandages of yours and see how your injuries are doing."

Clarke deflated just a little bit. She’d been hoping to avoid any reminders of what was going on beneath her clothes, but she could tell June was serious by the angle of her brows and the way she adjusted her leather vest, so she nodded a little.

"Yeah, sure. That sounds exactly as much fun as eating an entire bucket of veggies on my own," she replied lightly.

Alicia lowered her book, looking up to them. "Did you say bucket of veggies?"

"You, in there, please," June gestured at Clarke and then to one of the bedroom doors, then turned to Alicia and pointed a finger at her. "And _you_ stay out of the bucket, missy. I know _exactly_ how many tomatoes are in there."

Alicia made a face. "No fun allowed."

"Nope," June responded, following Clarke into the room and closing the door behind them.

Alicia glanced at John, who hadn’t moved a single muscle throughout any of it, and still seemed to be snoozing away fairly deeply in the strange position. She reluctantly looked over to Charlie as well, but she seemed to have fallen asleep with her book in the corner as well, and was even snoring softly.

With a devilish grin on her face, Alicia pushed herself up and, careful to step lightly with her braced leg so the heavy boot didn’t thunk against the floor, she made her way over to the sink and peered inside the bucket. She peeked around one last time before retrieving a tomato, her eyes glittering.

👱🏻♀️♾👩🏻

Clarke kept her eyes trained on the wall, afraid to see what June might find beneath her bandages. She closed her eyes tightly as June pulled back the gauze, a pained hiss escaping through her clenched teeth when the packing gauze was tugged loose from the wound itself.

June made a small sound in her throat that was nothing short of unidentifiable, and Clarke groaned internally.

Well, now she kind of _had_ to look, didn’t she?

Reluctantly, she turned to look at her hip and immediately regretted doing so.

"Oh, _fuck_ ," she gasped.

The wound looked terrible. The hollowed out portion where a walker had taken outa nice-sized chunk of fresh Clarkemeat to munch on was incredibly dark off to one side, with some very unpleasantly-colored fluids leaking out all over it. Her black blood was partially to blame, of course; turning everything under her skin a deep, dark, unfamiliar and fleshy dark grey. But that was something she was used to.

_This_ was something she was used to as well; just not on her own body, was all.

"Clarke," June started very quietly.

Clarke closed her eyes briefly. "I know. I uh.. My mother was a brilliant surgeon. I was following in her footsteps, or uh, I guess, trying to, before. I know what it means."

June didn’t reply, and slowly Clarke opened her eyes to find the woman regarding her in a way that made her feel incredibly raw and vulnerable. "You can’t know what it means. I don’t know what it means; I don’t think anyone could possibly know what it means, given your situation."

She was right, of course. The bite should have killed her days ago, left her to turn into one of those **_things_**. She should be infected with whatever it was that was making the walkers, she should have turned, she should have died, she should have—

"We’ll double the antibiotics for now, but we need to get some proper medical supplies," June began calmly rinsing the dark, dead flesh with saline, diligently cleaning it as carefully as possible. "Surgical supplies," she corrected herself.

Clarke swallowed hard. There wasn’t a choice; she knew that. The flesh had gone necrotic in places, and it needed to be removed for her to have even a shot at healing and avoiding sepsis and certain death.

"Do you think I could still turn?" Clarke asked, her voice smaller than she’d ever heard it before.

She’d always been a survivor; even when she’d tried desperately to die, she’d been terrible at it.But she’d rather be dead than one of _them_. And if June thought there was any chance, any at all that the bite could still—

"I don’t _think_ you will, no, but I don’t know for sure," June replied honestly, carefully irrigating the wound again and drawing a gasp from Clarke. "What I do know for sure is you’ve got a pretty bad bacterial infection, probably just from—"

"Dead, gross teeth going all Hannibal Lecter on me?" Clarke offered, but she wasn’t smiling, not even internally.

June just nodded a little, focused on her task. "There’s a hospital in the next town over that was abandoned at the start. We’ll take a day trip tomorrow if the weather holds, John and I. Pick up surgical supplies, IV meds. A wound-vac if we can find one that looks operational."

"No," Clarke replied quickly and a little too loudly, instinctively pulling away from June and causing herself more pain. "No, nobody’s going out there with them, with the walkers, not for me. We can break up the pills, filter them into bags of D10. We did it back home all the time."

June sat back a little, one brow raised. "And when that doesn’t work, because we didn’t remove the dead tissue and the necrosis spread anyway?"

Clarke worked her jaw a little, thinking about it. She thought of Jasper’s massive chest wound, of the metal driven deep into Finn’s abdomen. She thought of Raven, letting Abby cut into her while she screamed and suffered wide awake the whole time, just so she could have a chance at living and maybe, _maybe_ even walking.

"You can cut it out now," she decided. "I can take it."

June looked incredibly serious and was already shaking her head. "No. No way."

"I can take it," Clarke insisted. "I can."

"Well," June began. "I can’t. And I don’t think Alicia, Charlie, or John can, either."

Clarke couldn’t help the crestfallen look that overtook her face at the idea of them listening to her screaming in pain until she passed out as June was forced to carve into her squirming flesh. Who knew how deep the necrosis ran? Dying from shock was a possibility, too; only a _slightly_ less terrifying and likely one than dying from infection. And if it had spread deeper inside her already, if it had begun to find paths towards vital organs or gone into her blood, she would have an even bigger problem than a little bit of dead muscle tissue. And then they’d be mid-surgery and in the same position they were in right now.

"I don’t want anyone to risk getting hurt or dying for me," Clarke finally replied quietly. "Not again, not anymore."

June sat back just enough to render herself eye-level with Clarke. Blue met blue, and she made sure Clarke was paying very close attention before she said, "Too bad."

"Too bad?" Clarke frowned; that hadn’t been one of the responses she’d expected.

"Mhm," June nodded, returning to her task. "Too bad. That’s what people who care about one another do. You got hurt and almost died trying to save Alicia."

"That was different," Clarke argued, barely noticing the pain as June carefully spread some kind of salve over the region. "We got smacked in the face with a herd and a hurricane, and she was drowning. What else could I do?"

June shrugged. "Leave. Plenty of people would have chosen to save themselves instead, especially when it was looking _that_ hopeless."

"Not me," Clarke declared firmly. "I don’t leave people behind."

June paused once more, her eyes locking onto Clarke’s with a knowing confidence.

"Neither do we," she countered.

Clarke deflated then, all of the fight and breath going out of her all at once. It was _really_ hard to argue with someone who was making all the exact same points you would be making in the same argument.

June studied her for a moment, then nodded towards the living room and asked softly, "Why haven’t you told her?"

Clarke looked up in surprise, feeling suddenly more exposed than she had with her shirt rolled up to her breasts and her pants slung across her upper thighs for modesty. "Told who what?"

June raised a brow, and Clarke conceded, sighing heavily.

_But at the length,_

_truth will out.._

"She already doesn’t believe anything I’ve said to her. If she finds out I was bitten and didn’t turn, I don’t know how she’s going to react, and things are tense enough around here, with her and Charlie. And Al is still missing, and now you and John are going on some suicide mission to a hospital a million and a half walker-filled miles away, and—"

Clarke could feel herself nearing her breaking point. Her voice had elevated throughout her rant to the point of being almost shrill, and she knew she was losing control of both herself and the situation.

June gently put her hand up in a _stop_ gesture, her other hand resting on Clarke’s opposite shoulder, her thumb rubbing light circles on it to calm her. "Clarke, it’s okay. I’m not going to tell her, and neither will John or Charlie. I was just curious. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Alicia will react in any way other than being worried about you, but it’s your secret to tell, not mine."

Clarke was still breathing heavily, but her shoulders relaxed just a bit when her spinning brain processed that June wasn’t going to say anything, and wasn’t angry with her for lying to Alicia.

_Too bad Alicia will definitely not react the same way when she finds out you lied_ , taunted Clarke’s own voice inside her head.

Yeah, well. If there was always a silver lining, then it made sense that everything also had a down side, right?

So this was the down side of lying to Alicia: she was going to be very, _very_ pissed, and probably double down on her belief that everything else Clarke had told her was nothing but lies either. Maybe if she’d told Alicia about the bite as soon as she’d woken up, but it was too late now. And maybe _lie_ was a strong word, because technically she hadn’t told any lies; she’d merely _not_ told Alicia about the bite, and that was just a _sin of omission_.

She really had a whole Shakespeare theme going on today, and was beginning to feel a little bit oversaturated with irony. Her life was already her very own little comedy of errors, so why not borrow a line or two from one of the greats while she was at it?

"Thank you," Clarke finally replied, meaning it as she held June’s gaze. "I will tell her. Before, you know," she mimed snipping off her own flesh with scissors, which made the corners of June’s eyes crinkle just slightly with the hint of a bemused smirk. "I promise."

"Glad to hear it, since I’d rather not have her stumble into the middle of your surgery and have to explain it to her myself," June pointed out, and Clarke flushed a little as she nodded with a small smile.

"Heard, loud and clear. I’ll tell her today, okay?"

June nodded. "Maybe wait until John and I return, though."

Clarke paused, then thought of how Alicia might react. Clarke was injured, and it would just be Alicia, Charlie, and herself at the cabin while Butch and Sundance were hunting medical supplies. If Alicia freaked out, or Charlie ran off..

"Good call," Clarke agreed.

June finished up with her wound pretty quickly after that, and Clarke rested back quietly, letting her concentrate on her task. When she had finished, and stood, and reorganized her supplies, Clarke quietly helped her clean up the mess.

June’s hand was on the bedroom door when Clarke tentatively asked, "June?"

She turned her head back to look at Clarke, who paused briefly.

"Can you ask Alicia to come in here, please? I need to talk to her about something else, too."

June searched her eyes briefly, then gave her a short nod. "Of course."

"Thanks."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be well, be kind, mask up!


	10. The Bones of What You Believe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke attempts to connect with Alicia, and it doesn't go exactly as she planned. Shocking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise, have two chapters at once. As a certain brunette vampire Slayer once said, "'Tis the season.. whatever that means." 
> 
> Happy holidays, everyone. 
> 
> Be well, be kind, be safe, happy Sunday. 😊💕

Why don't you tell me, what do you need?  
There is a blank page for you  
Give me the bones of what you believe  
Maybe they'll save you from me

Will I be the strong hand keeping you safe  
Or will I break you in half?  
Play dead, wait it all out  
Will we win or lose it, this time?

When the pressure's building for a great white hope  
Do you give up the things that you love?  
And the pressure's building 'til it takes you whole  
Can you go back on your own word?

All of your brothers, they never died  
For what you kill for, slowly  
How it will grind you into the ground  
If you should try to hold me

\- CHVRCHES, " _Strong Hand_ "

**The Bones of What You Believe**

"Clarke? June said you wanted me."

Alicia entered the room a little unsurely, looking slightly groggy. Clarke immediately felt bad; Alicia had probably been approaching a nap when her presence was requested.

"Oh, it—it’s not important, if you were trying to rest. I just—" Clarke paused.

Alicia shook her head, sitting on the bed beside her. "No, it’s okay. That book was just really boring, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open."

Clarke chuckled lightly. "What book?"

Alicia put up one finger, then shifted and pulled the worn paperback from her pocket, reading off the cover.

" _The Adventures of James Capen Adams, Mountaineer and Grizzly Bear Hunter of California_." Alicia lifted an eyebrow, showing Clarke the cover to confirm that the entire mouthful was, in fact, the proper title of the book.

"Seriously?" Clarke snorted, taking the book and looking it over. "Wow. I’ve read some pretty dull books, but this looks.."

"Like it would taste better than it reads? Yeah, I licked the binding a little to confirm," Alicia replied dryly, taking the book back and leaning forward a bit to stuff it into her back pocket again.

Clarke tried very hard not to let her eyes linger too long at the gap in the back of her jeans as she did so, but her cheeks turned just a little pink. She quickly cleared her throat, shaking it off; that was _not_ where her head needed to be just then.

"So," Alicia said, turning back to her. "Everything okay?"

Clarke regarded her quietly for a moment, then said softly but solemnly, "I think we should talk."

"Okay," Alicia imitated her serious tone, but followed it up with a small smile. "Let’s talk. What would you like to talk about?"

"Your brother. I’d like to talk about Nick."

Alicia had not been expecting that, and her face quickly morphed into a mask of shock. "Well, um. Honestly, I’d.. Rather not, if it’s all the same."

"It’s not all the same," Clarke replied quietly. "Alicia, what happened? Why did Charlie—"

"No," Alicia said, standing up and grabbing the wall for support. "No, I’m not doing this. I’m going back out there, and I’m getting this terrible book out, and I’m gonna read about James Capen Adams. Or we can talk about something else, if you want, but I am not doing this. I’m not, Clarke. I can’t, okay?"

Clarke regarded the other girl quietly, making note of the pain and panic in her eyes and the fear spreading rapidly across her face, and decided to try a different tactic.

"Okay," she put her hands up in surrender. "Okay, I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about that. There was something else I wanted to say, too."

Alicia silently gestured for her to go ahead, but remained standing midway between Clarke and the door. Clarke realized then that she was going to have to tread even more carefully now. Alicia was on edge, like a deer having a lovely little snack who’d suddenly heard a potential threat creeping through the forest around itself. She was still and wide-eyed, suspicion and defensiveness swimming back and forth across her flickering gaze.

"When I was still with my group, we were scouting this old government bunker the leadership knew about. Looking for supplies, maybe even a place to hole up in. Only there were people there already. Other survivors."

Alicia paused, her shoulders tensing just a little bit, but she turned around and sat back down on the bed. She was silent, but she was looking at Clarke with focus. She was paying attention, and that was all the opening Clarke needed.

"They took us in; spoiled the shit out of us. Electricity, art supplies, hot running water. Modern medicine served up in a state of the art surgical facility. An operational satellite computer network and a silo with a missile ready to deploy."

"A _missile?"_ Alicia was rapt in her attention now, as she visibly tried to unravel the mysteries in her head despite herself. "The acid fog. When you went all ' _Riding in Cars with Boys'_."

"Was theirs, yeah."

Clarke nodded, highly encouraged by Alicia's active participation.

"They took us in, washed us up, gave us clean clothes and medical treatment. Promised to send their militia to look for the rest of our people. Then they fed us chocolate cake and asked us to move in with them."

Clarke paused briefly then; not for the dramatic delay, but because she desperately needed to take a full breath.

"All 48 of us."

Alicia’s eyebrow was nearly lifted off her brow at this point, her face beginning to show just the slightest hints of what could be emotion. If Clarke had to wager a guess, it looked like concern. It was a refreshing variation on the standard-issue expression of disbelief that usually accompanied any of Clarke’s origin stories. There was also a hint of underlying sorrow, and Clarke suddenly remembered the number 48 being pretty significant to Alicia, as well.

There had been forty-eight souls in the baseball diamond, too.

"What the hell did they want from a bunch of kids? Much less kids who, uh—I’m sorry, I don’t really remember, I had so much booze in me by then," Alicia looked genuinely apologetic, and Clarke gave her what she hoped was a look of obvious appreciation in return. "You guys were all in like, cult baby jail or something, right?"

_Well_ , Clarke thought. _That was certainly a helpful way of phrasing that._

She could work with this premise. Clan, cult. Grounder, Skyperson. _Skaikru, Trikru, Azgeda._ What did it matter?

_Wonkru, Twokru, Uskru, Themkru. Nokru, Everykru. Mekru, Youkru, to-Hell-with-everyone-else-kru._

A group, a settlement, a community. An identity, a shared set of ideals, a place in the world. Your friends, your family, your neighbors.

_Your_ **_people_ ** _._

What the hell difference did a name make?

Even when she was _Wanheda_ , or Princess, or Skygirl, she’d still been Clarke; that’s what she’d told Charlie. Even when she was Petula, or Walker Bait, or—god help her—when she was _Klark_.

_Klark, kom Skaikru;_ in that unbearably gentle click of Trigedasleng as it fell from plush, soft lips. The name that furled Lexa’s tongue against the roof of her mouth and hadn’t once failed to make Clarke immediately weak-kneed and wobbly under even the worst of circumstances.But it had been _how_ Lexa said her name that unilaterally melted any and all of her resolve; not _that_ it was her name.

Lexa could have called her anything she wanted in that tone. She could have said _jobi nut,_ or _dropship,_ or _banana,_ and Clarke still would have liquefied; it wouldn’t have mattered what word she’d used.

Not in _that_ tone.

_That which we call a rose, by any other name.._

"Right," Clarke.. _embellished_. Embellished was a good way to put it; while she was already working on giving things new names. "When resources started running low, we were cast out of the only home we’d ever known and into a dying world. Our leader Jaha said it was because our crimes had made us expendable."

"What a swell guy," Alicia shook her head a little, chewing on the cuticle of her pinkie finger. "So what did they want with you?"

"The Mountain Men?" Clarke replied instinctively; then cringed internally.

Alicia hesitated for a very brief moment, clearly remembering the exact phrasing of that from round one of Clarke’s storytelling—which obviously hadn’t gone so well. Clarke tensed in anticipation of the wheels coming off the wagon due to her slip of the tongue, but was pleasantly surprised when Alicia merely nodded.

Relieved by the lack of negative response, Clarke continued, her brain spinning as she took the time to choose her words more carefully than she ever had before.

"Turned out most of their people were sick. They had a genetic defect; one that required high tech care like regular blood tranfusions. They could be cured by organ transplants."

Oddly enough, Alicia’s eyes were almost a stormy golden-gray-green at the moment; it was a shade Clarke had never seen before on either one of her faces. In the moment, she found it merely interesting, but she already knew she'd be ruminating on the concept further in the not-too-distant future.

Alicia’s brows began to knit together and her complexion took on a greenish tint. The sick look in her eyes was a perfect echo of the expression Lexa had worn as she stood in a killing field surveying Pike’s aftermath. Slowly, slowly, her eyes widened further as the pieces began to fall into place.

"Oh, god. They wanted you for spare parts."

"Yeah," Clarke said quietly, involuntarily turning her gaze away briefly.

She couldn’t help it; she’d felt back then that it was her fault they’d been taken prisoner in the first place, and she still felt that way. She still blamed herself for the torture Monty, Harper, Bellamy, and Echo had all suffered. (As if she didn't still blame herself for _everything_.)

Perhaps if she’d made different choices, or if she’d played it a little cooler when they first came into the mountain. It was a miracle she’d been able to escape at all, and she highly doubted she’d have been able to do so if the universe’s massive sense of irony hadn't thrown her and Anya together again. She’d let them know repeatedly how suspicious she was of them; what she now knew to be the hallmark of an unpracticed spy.

_Never let your enemy know what you’re thinking, Clarke. It's hard sometimes, especially if they're antagonizing you, but it's the only advantage you have over them. They can't read your mind, so you have to be better at thinking, planning, formulating, considering. And most importantly, you have to be better than they are at self-control. Get centered, get it together, get out._

She couldn't help the tiny pang in her heart, remembering when Other Clarke had asked Echo to teach her to do what Echo could do. The former _Azgedan_ spy had been reluctant at first, but agreed. She'd warmed up quickly, though, and decided the spy training would be enhanced by teaching Clarke the way of what Echo felt was a critically underrated method of self-defense.

The staff.

It was a simple as finding the right branch or pipe if you had no other weapon. Silent, sturdy, and with a bit of practice, she was certain Clarke would be both swift and accurate; perhaps even deadly someday _._

There it was again. _Someday_.

Clarke had taken to it surprisingly well; getting up before sunrise to stand facing eastward as they practiced forms together. Echo was an excellent teacher, and Clarke had always been a fast learner. It only took three sessions for Clarke to put Echo on her back for the first time, weaponless and panting, but with a proud, beaming grin on her face.

_And the student becomes the master_ , Clarke had joked.

She lifted the end of the carefully carved staff from where she’d held it pressed against the Ice Nation girl’s throat and put her hand out to help her up. Therefore, Clarke had no one to blame but herself when Echo twisted her, her staff, and her pride sideways, flipped them over, and landed hard on Clarke’s ribcage with her blade pressed to her throat.

Echo had smiled very sweetly down at the stunned former Skygirl and just said, _I doubt it_.

Alicia was completely focused on Clarke and had been since she'd begun speaking, but her expression, while intense, remained totally unreadable. Her jaw was set, though, and her pupils were slightly dilated as they looked intently back in Clarke's general direction. Her expression was hauntingly familiar for any number of reasons; all of which were making Clarke incredibly uncomfortable, but she refused to look away.

She _couldn’t_ look away. Not from Lexa's face. Not from Alicia's face. Not from her own painful, earth-shattering truth; not during this particular tale.

Alicia’s jaw tightened a little, but that didn't seem directed at Clarke because her eyes softened as she reached out. The soft tips of her slim fingers brushed across Clarke’s chin and part of the way up her jawline as she gently guided the blonde’s gaze back to her own.

Clarke swallowed thickly, the intensity of their shared gaze making her shudder internally. She’d looked away because she hadn’t wanted Alicia to see her hidden shame; to see her guilt and failures painted in the emotional equivalent of neon orange all over her face.

_That wasn’t what this was supposed to be about._

Alicia stayed quiet, but her eyes continued to search Clarke’s intently for a seeming eternity, and it had been nearly half a minute when it finally occurred to Clarke that it wasn’t her humiliation the brunette was looking for. It wasn’t her shortcomings and mistakes. She wasn't looking to see that part of Clarke laid bare at all.

Alicia was studying Clarke’s truth; holding her under the swinging lightbulb in a closet somewhere, desperate to get the answers she sought. She was looking for the raw, red, scab-covered flesh that lay beneath the fresh skin of Clarke's story. She was looking for the proof of Clarke's pain, but no longer seeking it in her words.

Alicia was deciding about her.

When Clarke realized it, her shoulders relaxed just slightly, and she tilted her chin—still being gently cupped by Alicia’s warm hand—up just a bit further. She looked back imploringly, inviting Alicia to dive into her gaze, to come inside her fractured mind and tear the place apart looking for a lie; for even a hint of infidelity in anything the blonde had said, in anything she felt. The words may have been overly vague, but the tales were truth. Her sins, her suffering, the suffering she had caused. All of her pains, and her mistakes. All of the blood, all of the death, and the empty cavern of her grief-frozen heart were all unequivocally, undeniably, and unquestionably truth. Alicia could look, but she would find no lies.

_Search through whatever you want,_ Clarke thought, her challenge glinting behind her eyes and—hopefully—directly into Alicia’s.

_You don’t even need a warrant, because you won’t find anything. Throw open the dressers and drawers, dump them everywhere and pull the doors from the hinges. Overturn the furniture, tear the pillows and mattresses open, and rip the paintings from the walls. Hell, you can even call in another hurricane if you want, tell it to bring a few of its friends and blow the entire place off it’s very foundation, because you still won’t find a trace of a lie. Not here._

_I have nothing to hide from you, Alicia Clark. Burn it all down if you need to._

**_I can take it._ **

**_I can take anything you can dish out._ **

**_I can take anything._ **

Afterwards, Clarke would spend far too many hours wondering if she’d somehow been briefly given the powers of telepathic communication, just for the moment. Because it seemed _very_ much like Alicia had somehow heard every single word she’d thought. The look on her face reflected the same process behind Alicia’s eyes that Clarke would have anticipated if she’d actually spoken those thoughts aloud.

Clarke braced herself for a dismissive sort of response; for an aggravated sigh, or a sarcastic dig, or even a full-on explosion of anger and semi-nuclear meltdown. Who knew what Alicia might see or think she saw in Clarke’s deeply haunted baby blues? Much less how she might interpret it, as she collected and compiled her subjective data inside their shared gaze?

"Okay," Alicia finally said, letting go of Clarke’s chin.

This time, it was Clarke’s turn for a lifted eyebrow and look of confusion.

"Okay?"

Alicia nodded just once, and only very slightly. "Okay."

Clarke blinked slowly, taking in Alicia’s marginally more relaxed posture as well as the look of attention and interest that was returning to her face as she settled back once more. She seemed to be waiting for Clarke to continue her story; which frankly, Clarke couldn’t believe. She genuinely hadn’t expected to get this far with her, even when she’d asked June to send her in.

However, Clarke hadn’t ever been much for looking a gift horse in the mouth either, as Dorie had put it. She allowed herself one moment to be grateful for it before she turned her own mouth back to her own business, which at the moment was getting back on track.

"There was this other, third group we’d run into a few times—"

"The Grounders," Alicia supplied hesitantly. "The ones that attacked you, when you first came down from—"

Alicia cut herself off very abruptly, and they both remained stock-still and silent, the brunette’s jaw hanging slightly slack below her parted lips. She had the strangest look on her face, and Clarke imagined she herself was wearing a very similar expression. She held her breath, afraid that so much as a centimeter shift in the air would slam the business end of a butterfly effect needle into the dangerously thin bubble that they were currently floating in.

"C-came down from.. Wherever your cult was, there in the mountains," Alicia babbled, her panic physically palpable in the suddenly claustrophobic, stuffy room. Her eyes were wider than Clarke had ever seen anyone’s be, and they were pleading with everything she had for Clarke to preserve the bubble. Just for now; just for awhile. Please, just let us get past this moment, let the bubble carry us over it safely for a little bit longer.

_Ai beja yu daun, Clarke. Beja._

_[I’m begging you, Clarke. Please.]_

_Please, Clarke. I’m not ready to dive headfirst into the sci-fi blockbuster of the next century. Not yet._

_I’m sorry. I’m not ready to be with anyone. Not yet._

"The Grounders. We didn’t trust them, they didn’t trust us," Clarke continued, and Alicia’s sigh of relief and gaze of deep appreciation felt like a blessing from the ancient gods entering her body all at once, like an injection of straight serotonin. "But some of their people had been taken by Mount Weather too, and there were a lot more of them than us."

Alicia got a strange look on her face as she regarded Clarke then; one that was every bit as unfamiliar and mystifying as the color of her eyes remained. She was considering something, so Clarke paused in her tale to allow her to finish.

"Your people were afraid, but you trusted _someone_ ," Alicia finally assessed, her eyes flicking between either of Clarke’s rapidly, seemingly daring Clarke to deny the accusation.

Clarke took a slow, shaky breath and steeled herself. She let Alicia look deep into her eyes again, holding her focus as she admitted the truest truth of all of her truths out loud, and for the very first time to another living human being.

"Lexa. I trusted Lexa."

Alicia regarded her quietly. "What did she do? You said she betrayed you."

Clarke paused; she hadn’t expected that at _all_.

She remembered it quite clearly, actually. By the time she was _very_ briefly covering the most basic and necessary details of the betrayal—using exactly that word—for Al’s interview, Alicia had been tussling with a shovel, of all things.

There was a footlocker in the ground, half buried by time and a small but thick swampy muck. The weather-rusted metallic corner was barely jutting out; just enough to reflect the last rays of the fleeing sun. It had already been drizzling by then, with warnings of worse to come—much worse, as they’d discovered—but Alicia was on a mission to free the thing and hadn’t even noticed.

Hadn’t seemed to notice, anyway. Apparently she’d been paying a lot more attention to everything going on around her than Clarke had realized. And then, as she realized something else, she couldn’t help a small smile of respect for the girl’s sharp mind.

Alicia hadn’t given even one, single, tiny, shrimpy little rat’s ass of a fuck about the footlocker. She knew she wasn’t going to dig it out. Not with a shovel twice the size of the one she’d had, and not with the help of two other people and a tank, unless the tank had some means of slicing through tree roots encasing it installed. Clarke thought she might’ve noticed a giant blade swinging around inside, so the footlocker was a hopeless case from the word go.

She’d thought Alicia was merely disseminating some of her extraneous aggression at the time, but the sly girl had simply not wanted Clarke to know what information she had and didn’t. Hoping to hear something the tape didn’t pick up or Al didn’t catch; an indicator of Clarke’s true motives, perhaps.

Alicia was good, she had to admit. She hadn’t even realized, and she was well-practiced in the way of spotting sketch behaviors. She’d been distracted, sure, but Alicia had pretended she didn’t know and didn’t want to know.

_One hell of an actress, that one._

"You were twelve feet away, banging a shovel against steel. You were listening to all that?"

Alicia at least had the decency to look a tiny bit ashamed of herself. Her face flushed, her eyes quickly shifting sideways under heavy lashes as she avoided Clarke’s studious gaze.

"No. I just.. overheard some of it," Alicia mumbled, still avoiding her eyes.

Clarke lifted an eyebrow with an amused look, leaning forward further until their gazes met once more. She waited until Alicia had sighed in exasperation and dragged her eyes back to Clarke with a fiery challenge in them.

"Bullshit," Clarke told her quietly. "That’s bullshit."

Clarke stood from the chair and swung around easily on one toe, landing on the bed beside Alicia, who let out a soft gasp of surprise. Clarke herself let out a muffled groan of pain combined with a reflexive wince when their hips bumped against one another’s.

Thinking of the bite rotting at her hip and how Alicia might take it—what it might do to thee tenuous threads stretching between them, particularly at the moment—Clarke forced her face to screw back into a more situationally appropriate expression, and shook off the renewed ache swirling inside her. She continued studying Alicia intently, but quietly; simply waiting for a response. The increasingly awkward silence stretched between them until it was nearly uncomfortable before Alicia finally responded, however reluctantly she did so.

"So what if it is bullshit? What does it matter?" Alicia shrugged her off, turning away to look out the window.

"The truth matters."

"Oh, really, _Wanheda_?" Alicia shot back, crossing her arms. "You haven’t been completely honest with me, either."

"No. No, I haven’t," Clarke agreed, thinking of the alternations she’d made. No, they weren’t _lies_ ; but there was a gradient of honesty, after all, and she hadn’t been at the pinhead top of it where full factual honesty lay.

"I was completely honest with Al," she continued. "You just don’t believe it. But I need you to."

Alicia was beginning to get frustrated, maybe even angry again; Clarke could see the fire burning behind her eyes like a bomb ready to go off as she scoffed.

"We’re back to this again, the craziness? What do you _want_ from me, Clarke?"

"I want you to _see_ me," Clarke replied, her voice a higher pitch and more tainted by her integral distress than she’d intended. She steadied Alicia’s shoulders as the girl moved to look away again, their faces less than two inches apart. She heard the muffled intake of breath, felt the soft exhale slipping past her cheek as the moment between them grew more and more intense with each passing second.

"See _me_ ," Clarke implored, giving up on her brilliant plan as her resolve began to shatter; as it occurred to her exactly how much she wanted Alicia to do exactly what she was begging her to.

Alicia rolled her eyes, but it seemed to be more of an action of denial than anything else. "I see you, Clarke. You’re right here, and I have working eyes."

"Do you?" Clarke challenged. "Do you _really_ see me, Alicia? Or do you see the idea of me, and you’re afraid to look past it because you’re scared of what you might find if you search any harder?"

There was a very clear message of what appeared to be _murder_ behind Alicia’s eyes now, her chest rising and falling in quick rhythm as her glare drilled a hole right through the center of Clarke’s chest.

"I’m not _afraid_ of anything," Alicia threw the challenge back in her face, and her tone made it feel like a slap to the cheek. Clarke wasn’t dissuaded by it, and took the opportunity to throw Alicia off her game even further by moving her face roughly one quarter of an inch closer to the brunette’s.

"Then tell me the truth," Clarke challenged.

"About _what_? I don’t even remember what the hell we were—"

"About your brother. About Charlie."

Alicia’s eyes went very wide at that, and she actually coughed—a weak, watery cough that caught in her throat a few times on the way out. As if Clarke’s announcement had thrown her so far off her game that she hadn’t even been able to swallow her own saliva properly just then.

"I told you what happened," Alicia said thickly, the sound of her dry tongue and mouth obvious in her gravelly tone.

"Some of it," Clarke agreed. "But there’s more. I know there’s something else."

"There isn’t."

"You got Nick back. He was lost for awhile. You said it yourself, that Nick was always lost. You’d just lost your mother, you lost your home. You lost most of your people, and every single thing you were trying to build in this godforsaken world, right? You probably thought you’d lost yourself, too. And then you—in some kind of a way, you got Nick back. You were starting to feel like maybe things could work out, at least a little bit. You started to let yourself have just a little bit of hope again, right? Maybe because he did?"

Clarke searched Alicia’s eyes like they held all of the secrets of the world even as they began watering.

"I know what that’s like. I _know_ what it’s like to finally—to have back someone you thought was lost forever. And then to watch them get taken away from you again.. That’s not something everyone understands. But **_I_** do, Alicia. I do get it."

Alicia was on the ragged edge by now, vulnerable and shaky, her armor cast off to the side. She was exposed, and Clarke could see it, and so she seized the moment in a way she hoped would make Lexa proud of her.

"Why did Charlie do it?"

Alicia looked almost sick, her face impossibly tight as she avoided Clarke’s gaze. She didn’t make any attempt to move, get up, or leave either the room or the situation, though, so Clarke decided for the moment at least to hold steady on her path. Wait for Alicia to talk, and then reassess.

"Why are you doing this?" Alicia whispered, her voice cracking. "What does it matter if I believe you?"

"Because you need someone, Alicia. We all do. People can't be alone; there's no point to any of the shit we go through, if we do it all alone. We need people."

"And you think you're the person to go through it with me." Alicia's tone made it clear she wasn't asking for confirmation. She was merely laughing, and it wasn't a kind or friendly sort of laughter; it was more disbelief than anything else. Clarke wouldn't be deterred so easily, however.

"For now, yes. I think I'm someone who can go through this, right here, right now, with you. Because I understand you in a lot of ways. We have more in common than you think."

Alicia eyed her critically for a moment. "If this is about wanting to sleep with me, you don't have to do this whole song and dance, you know. We can just, like, go for it."

"I--um, what?" Clarke blinked, genuinely stunned. She certainly had not anticipated that particularly sharp curveball, and it was clear Alicia was amused by her disorientation, even in her current state.

"I'm just saying. I'm not the kind of girl who needs to be impressed by tales of brave adventures or wooed with flowers and emotional support or something. I never was."

"I, uh-- me either, but that's not--"

Alicia rolled her eyes. "Please. The story about me having your girlfriend's exact face was a nice touch, I'll admit. Creative." her voice dropped a few octaves, taking on a husky yet almost threatening sort of tone.

"Did you watch me get changed at the school? Is that how you knew about the birthmark?" she whispered huskily into Clarke's ear. Clarke's eyes fluttered shut, her pulse pounding in her throat and ears as Alicia's lips gently brushed the shell of her bright red ear.

"Never mind, I know you did, but I don't care. Guess you liked what you saw, so come on, Clarke. We both know you want me. You don’t have to keep trying to.. You know."

Clarke's breath hitched in her throat, the sultry tone from Alicia combining with her proximity was, simply put, _doing things_ to Clarke. Things that were rapidly pushing her into a sort of fugue state. And a very aroused sort of fugue state, at that. Her traitorous body was instinctively responding in every single way as if it was Lexa's lips to her ear, Lexa's hand brushing across her leg with a featherlight touch. But it _wasn't_ Lexa doing it. And though Clarke was in no position to deny being somewhat stupidly attracted to Alicia, she still hadn't quite caught up with her own reality and found she couldn't formulate a verbal response just yet.

For her part, Alicia seemed unconcerned about the lack of reply, and she smirked knowingly at her while walking her fingertips lightly over Clarke's thigh.

"If someone has to _try_ to impress me, they already blew their shot. You don't have to try. You saved my fucking _life_ , Clarke. I owe you a huge thank you. Maybe a couple of them, even. You know, long as you're not a screamer."

"Alicia, I swear to god this is not about getting into your pants," Clarke forced her eyes open, the inside of her cheek beginning to bleed where it was clamped tightly between her clenched molars; a fairly ineffective attempt at controlling herself.

"Then just consider it a bonus, I guess. Come on," Alicia pouted. "Let me show you my appreciation. We kissed. I’ve seen how you look at me, I can feel your heart racing. I guess I really do remind you of her, huh?"

The last part was said lightly, playfully, but it felt like a barbed wire garrote slicing through Clarke’s heart, and she felt sick inside and unable to formulate a reply.

"Come on," she nipped Clarke's earlobe. "You want me, Clarke."

Clarke couldn't very easily deny that, given that Alicia was climbing onto her lap. Her arms had immediately encircled Alicia's waist without her brain being aware of it, and that realization was how Clarke knew she was officially in serious trouble.

Her brain sure knew the difference between Lexa and Alicia, but her body was stupid, and needy, and frankly, it didn't care; it just _wanted_.

"I can try to be her if you’re into it, you know," Alicia continued, rolling her hips against Clarke's with a soft moan into her ear. "I always liked pretending to be someone else. Halloween and drama club, school spirit week.. Come on, my big hero. Let me make you forget for a little while. Let me be Lexa for you. You deserve it."

Clarke froze, an icy electrical storm beginning to brew in her chest; a raging, swirling ball of sleet, thunder, and lightning forming deep inside her hollow heart.

"Don't say that," Clarke begged quietly, her resolve and heart melting away in unison.

Alicia misinterpreted Clarke's meaning, her lips ghosting lightly across the shell of her ear. "It's okay to let yourself be appreciated once in awhile, Clarke."

Clarke meant to respond, she really did; but Alicia's face was so close to hers, she could smell her breath, laced with the scent of the chicken-flavored and very uncooked noodles she’d been crunching on earlier. She could also see the massive increase in the size of Alicia's blown out pupils, and that was the last thing she saw before their lips met.

It took a moment for Clarke to realize that it was _she_ who had guided Alicia's chin closer; she who had cupped one soft, silken cheek as she did so. And it was Clarke whose tongue danced along the edges of Alicia's lips, gently seeking permission for entry.

Permission was granted almost immediately, and Clarke felt everything fall away as she explored the warm curves of a mouth at once foreign and familiar. Her mouth seemed to briefly stutter as both she and it realized in perfect synchronicity that Alicia did, in fact, also _taste_ just like Lexa.

Clarke pulled back from the kiss abruptly, willing herself not to look at Alicia's face; afraid what she might see there. She couldn't help it, though; her eyes were drawn back up quickly, and the look on her face ripped right through Clarke.

Alicia's breathing was labored, though if it was from their kiss or the discomfort of her rib, Clarke couldn't be sure. Her startling green eyes were heavily lidded, giving her an almost drunken expression. She looked exactly like Lexa had after their first kiss in her tent all those lifetimes ago; right down to the look of regret and uncertainty at Clarke's sudden change of heart.

"I'm sorry," Clarke found herself explaining in a hushed, earnest tone. "I just.. I don't think I can. It's--I know you don't believe me, but I'm telling you the truth, about where I came from. And about Lexa. And I loved her, I _do_ love her, and I don't.. I don't know how to—to be with you, when..." Clarke's voice trailed off, guilt and regret plastered on her face.

She turned her eyes to the floor after a moment, but Alicia's response didn't come. Clarke's traitorous hands, seemingly with an agenda of their own, were still on Alicia's lower back, her thumbs rubbing light circles into her skin. She tried to stop them, but Alicia's skin was soft, and warm, and smooth, and it felt like Lexa's skin, too.

"I'm gonna be honest, Clarke. You're putting out some mixed signals right now, and, uh.." Alicia began, pausing as Clarke's fingers danced over a spot on the small of her back that Clarke had a feeling might also be quite sensitive.

"I know," Clarke mumbled, feeling like a fool as her hands began exploring the expanse of skin across Alicia's back. "I'm sorry, you feel so good, I just.."

She forgot what it was that she 'just' when Alicia slid closer, their hips locking together; an action that brought forth an unexpected and incredibly obscene-sounding moan from Clarke's throat. Alicia let out a soft one of her own in response, and Clarke felt the very last of her self control beginning to slip away, because she truthfully hadn’t felt so much as a tickle from the bite when her body connected so intimately with Alicia’s.

Suddenly, the increasingly familiar sound of _Shave & a Haircut_ sounded at the door. Startled by the noise, they both jumped and then let out a groan of discomfort in unison as their respective hip and rib were each knocked roughly against the others'.

"Uh--yeah?" Clarke called out, her eyelashes fluttering as Alicia's lips continued exploring her throat despite the interruption. Clarke closed her eyes, letting out a deep breath as she held onto Alicia.

"Uh, I'm not one to go 'round policing adults, particularly in the ah, _boudoir_ , as it were. But the walls here are pretty thin. It’s a uh, pretty small dwelling and I was just here in the little cowpoke’s room when I, uh.. You know, so uh.."

Clarke swore she could practically _hear_ the deep red color of John Dorie's face, and judging from the size of Alicia's eyes, she could too. She covered her own face in her palms, wishing the floor would open up and swallow them right then, but the universe, as usual, ignored her.

"Ah, right, sure thing. We're sorry, John," Alicia called back, wincing a little.

"Really sorry, John," Clarke added, knowing her own face was probably as red as his was. At least the interruption gave her a chance to gather herself; she could surely keep control now.

"I do appreciate that," Dorie replied, sounding very appreciative indeed. "I’ll let you get back to uh—I’ll be.." He paused, and the girls exchanged a glance and a couple of small smiles at the flustered sound in his voice.

"If you need anything, just give a holler," he decided on, before they heard his heavy booted footfalls moving away from the bedroom door.

The girls let out a shared sigh of relief as they watched the awkward interaction disappearing in the rearview mirror, and Clarke glanced back to Alicia, readying herself to fix the mess she’d accidentally made. She opened her mouth to tell Alicia she really wasn't interested—okay, to _lie_ to Alicia about her level of interest— but all that came out was a tone of mock insult.

Clarke looked the beautiful woman right in her brilliant mossy eyes and playfully accused, "You got us in trouble."

A wide grin very slowly formed and spread across Alicia’s face just below eyes twinkling with mischief at the childish declaration. She even gave a half-chuckle before replying, "I'm pretty sure that was _your_ moaning that gave us away, actually. Not that I'm complaining, just means we’ll have to keep your mouth busy."

Clarke's cheeks went a deep pink at that, and she was overcome with a sudden urge to playfully nip and bite at Alicia’s lips. But then her brain began to shake off the daze of the moment, reminding her what the state of everything really was, and she sighed heavily.

"We should stop this, anyway. Really. Before it gets out of hand," Clarke replied gently, but solemnly. "I'm not denying that I want you, Alicia. I can't actually remember the last time I wanted anything more."

"So what's the problem, then? You want me, I want you.." Alicia shifted on her lap, and Clarke's arms were still wrapped around her. "That's a win-win, right?"

"Alicia," Clarke said with a heavy sigh, trying to still her fingers where they were lightly spreading out on Alicia’s lower back despite herself. "Come on."

Alicia playfully nuzzled her nose against Clarke’s neck, coming dangerously close to that tiny, magical little spot behind her ear that Lexa had always—

" _You_ come on, Clarke.. Tell me, what do you wanna come on?" Alicia asked boldly, whispering with a husky tone into her ear, her lips brushing the shell of it with featherlight little bumps. She ran her nails lightly over the back of Clarke’s neck, drawing a shiver from the blonde.

"Fingers?" Testing the waters even further, Alicia bit lightly at her earlobe, giving it a light tug with the edges of her teeth. She flicked her tongue against the whorls and divots of the shell of Clarke’s ear, drawing an absolutely obscene moan from deep within the back of her throat.

"How 'bout tongue?" Alicia whispered, her breath caressing the now-damp spots covering the span from Clarke’s collarbone to her nose. It was getting away from her a bit now; Clarke was _well_ aware of that, and she didn’t think there was much she’d had to do that was harder than pulling away from Alicia’s undulating body and determined mouth, because _jesus_ , she really did want her.

Just.. 

"Alicia. _Stop_ ," Clarke finally let out in a warning tone, trying to get her full attention.

Alicia went stock still and remained that way for a solid moment, her expression defaulting back to totally unreadable as she extricated herself from Clarke's lap and stood as quickly as she could.

"You don't have to go," Clarke added quickly, before noticing the flames flickering and burning behind Alicia's emerald eyes. "I just—" But she cut herself off quickly when she realized the unreadable expression was gone in an instant and had been replaced by something much less open to interpretation.

Alicia was, without a doubt and unequivocally _pissed_. She took a step back, spite and rage burning in her mesmerizing green eyes and the tang of bitterness on her tongue. Odd, Clarke thought; when they'd kissed, she had tasted deceptively sweet.

"You _only_ want me because I look like her," she stated flatly; she wasn’t asking Clarke to agree with her; rather she dared her with her eyes to deny it.

Clarke faltered; that hadn't _quite_ been the accusation she had expected, but she supposed it was every bit as fair an assessment as any other. Either way, she shook slightly as her own anger began to boil over deep inside her chest.

How _dare_ she?

Alicia was no Lexa substitute; nothing even resembling it; that fine, familiar face be damned. Truthfully, it sickened Clarke to be at all attracted to that slim, muscular body that housed such a different soul. Once, on the first day, she had even allowed herself a very brief, very uncomfortable fantasy of marring Alicia's beautiful face dwindle through her mind for far too long before shoving it away.

"I can’t _stand_ you because you look like her," Clarke countered with just a hint of warning in her voice.

Alicia looked briefly stunned, but her pupils were suddenly blown, and her dirt stained chest heaved behind her loose flannel. She was still incredibly turned on, perhaps even more so than she’d been with her tongue in Clarke’s ear. Clarke couldn’t help but smirk internally with the surety of her knowledge, despite the fact that she was more turned on than she’d been with Alicia’s tongue in her ear, too.

"Good," Alicia spat. "Hate me all you want, baby. It just makes it hotter."

Clarke shivered from the sudden increase in her own pulsing adrenaline. She hated herself at the moment, too, for being so ridiculously turned on by the entire debacle, for being too weak to do what her brain knew she should be doing, and for completely blowing what she’d come in here to do in the first place.

Now Clarke was pretty pissed too, which was a very strange feeling to have when combined with the heat pounding through her body and arousal settling in a pool between her thighs at Alicia’s proximity, even under the extraordinarily weird circumstances. Still..

_Baby?_

"Don't call me that," she responded threateningly, her eyes flashing even as they too, grew dark as pitch behind her own expanding pupils. The message probably would’ve had more effect if she hadn’t had her finger through Alicia's belt loop at the time, or if Alicia's hand hadn't immediately dropped down to pull Clarke's hand more firmly against her waistline, but what could you do?

_Knock, knock, knock-knock, knock_ …

Clarke and Alicia both paused, their chests heaving in unison as they waited for the rest.

_Knock, knock._

There it was.

Clarke managed to pull herself together first, calling back, "Sorry! We’re sorry!"

"I really am, uh, sorry about these walls," Dorie replied, sounding genuinely sorry; though it was unclear whether he was sorry for their lack of privacy or the rest of the group for having to hear the objectively concerning sounds coming from the other side of the closed door.

Probably both.

"No, no, the walls are great. We love the walls, they’re amazing walls. We’re sorry for.. Uh.. You know, the.. Noise." Alicia added in a rush, biting her lower lip. "Really. It won’t happen again."

"I appreciate that, thank you muchly," came the reply, right before the boots retreated once more, accompanied by a heavy sigh.

The dark spell having been broken the way it was, the girls slowly shared a cautious glance, but it seemed the fire between them had been tempered down for real this time. They wore matching masks of embarrassment and exhaustion, and when their eyes met, tiny twin smiles began to lift the edges of their cheeks in sync.

"Sometimes I can’t believe he’s real," Clarke admitted quietly behind her tentative smile.

"I’ve known him longer than you, and neither can I," Alicia replied, picking at nonexistent fuzz on her jeans as she sat back on the bed.

The air was tense, pregnant with everything they’d said and done and even more so with everything they _hadn’t_ said and done. Clarke let out an exasperated groan and rubbed her face tiredly.

"This is just.. Stupid. Really stupid," she finally declared, flopping onto her back on the bed.

Alicia leaned back on her elbows, wincing and shifting just a little to account for her rib as she looked over at Clarke, whose arm was now draped across her eyes to hide her aggravated expression. She reached over and lifted the blonde’s arm carefully, discarding it to the side of her head. When Clarke’s baby blues found her own, Alicia took a moment to ensure Clarke realized how solemn and serious she was about to be, and Clarke received the message so clearly from those sparkling greens that she nodded despite Alicia not saying anything.

"You’re right. It’s stupid, and I’m.." Alicia swallowed and sighed heavily. "Look, I’m sorry, Clarke, okay? I don’t even know what I was doing. I.. I’m not usually like that, you know? I just.."

Alicia trailed off again, but this time she didn’t pick back up; merely sat where she was, looking confused and crestfallen at herself. Clarke pushed herself up slowly, a look of concern sliding firmly into place as she did so.

"It’s okay," Clarke reassured her, rubbing her back comfortingly.

"No. No, it’s not. I’m like, a great big green-eyed monster over here or something," Alicia scoffed, shaking her head in disbelief.

Clarke frowned, even more confused than she’d already been. "What are you jealous of?"

"What?" Alicia suddenly looked like a deer caught in headlights, and the panic flicking across her face was very obvious despite her concentrated efforts to get it under control. "I didn’t say that."

"Green-eyed monster? That means envious, jealous," Clarke replied patiently.

"I know," Alicia responded, a bit testily. "I’m not an idiot, Clarke. I was going to Berkeley before all this bullshit happened, you know. I just meant that I feel like a monster right now. And I happen to have green eyes, which is the first thing I thought of, so that’s just how it came out. Okay?"

Clarke didn’t buy it for a minute; not one single second. But she also didn’t want to go another round with Alicia on the fight-or-fuck show, and she _really_ didn’t want John Dorie to knock on the door again. Surely even his patience had to have its limits, and she suspected a third round of _please stop making those noises_ could be something that might push the cowboy to or even past his limits.

"Okay," was all Clarke said. "Okay. I’m sorry. Really. I believe you, okay?"

Alicia studied her for a moment, then nodded a little bit. "Okay."

"And I'm sorry, too," Clarke apologized softly, meaningfully, and with genuine sorrow welling behind blue eyes. "Because I want you really badly, Alicia. And I want you for you, not any other reason. I do. I’m just.. I’m not ready to be with anyone. Not yet."

Clarke felt the world colliding inside her chest, and if Alicia noticed she was increasingly choked up and unsteady as she continued, Clarke was thankful she made no acknowledgement of it. Alicia swallowed slowly, blinking her hooded eyelids back into place as she took back full control of herself.

"But someday? I will be," Clarke added quite firmly as she pushed herself up from the bed. She started for the door, but paused on her way and gently cupped Alicia's cheek in her remarkably steady palm.

"And I hope you're still right here when I am."

There it was; a present truth that had been equally true the day Clarke regrettably missed her opportunity to say so to Lexa. She didn't know if admitting it to her would have changed things at the Mountain, but she highly doubted it. 

Lexa was a wartime consigliere for goodness sake; the move had been one Clarke _absolutely_ would have made herself had she been exactly the same combination of experienced and traumatized as Lexa was at the time and had the same knowledge, history, and disposition. It wasn't about that; not the mountain, or the betrayal, or their people. It wasn't even about her and Lexa at the end of the day; not really.

It was about being brave enough to speak your truth out loud to someone else. It was about what she had owed to Lexa, after the Commander had been brave enough to challenge the very core of her entire existence and beliefs system with a single, rebellious kiss.

If Clarke was a different sort of a person, that kiss could have broken the alliance and started a secondary war. It could have allowed her an opportunity to ruthlessly slash the Commander's throat, if she'd been hiding some sick ninja skills. It would make Clarke a hero to her people, and who wouldn't want to do _that_ for a living?

Besides.. well, Clarke.

Anyway, Lexa had been fearless and forthright when she'd seized that one perfect, precious, heart-soaring, ground-shattering, life-changing moment. Clarke had long felt she owed Lexa the same raw honesty; had every intention in the moment of giving it to her, in fact. But then Bellamy's signal, and then the explosions at the dam, and then..

_And then, and then, and then.._

Even as Clarke slowly turned away from all she knew and all she was and had ever been before, the _Camp Jaha_ sign glittering in the brilliant afternoon sunlight behind her, she had thought of that moment with a painfully heavy boulder in her gut.

She'd thought, as she headed towards the forest and her new life, ever so briefly about the kiss. She touched her fingertips to her lips, remembering how Lexa's own had tasted against them with a raw wound of hatred sucking at her frozen heart.

But even as she marched through _Trigeda,_ hating Lexa harder and harder with each impassioned step of her thick-soled boots, Clarke couldn't help but imagine kissing Lexa again. She decided to allow the stubby half-melted candle of hope stay lit; just for a little while. Just to keep her heart from becoming any heavier with the thick sheets of ice encasing it.

She had breathed out the name of the tiny flame flickering flickering inside her onto the deafened ears of the afternoon breeze, whispering _Lexa, Lexa, Lexa_ to the universe.

Now, she reached into her otherwise silent heart with something new clasped in her hand; something mysterious and confusing and heartbreakingly painful and wonderful. She carefully lit the new flame from the old, and nestled the tiny little sticks of hope deep in the center of her soul, cupping them protectively.

As she straightened her shirt out for the second time in the last hour, she thought of Alicia’s smiling face; a telltale bit of tomato seed evidence still clinging to her chin.

_Someday._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> . Yes, there canonically were 48 people at the baseball diamond on Fear the Walking Dead (it was 47 before June joined them), and 48 Delinquents in Mount Weather (including Clarke). I do my research, and every once in awhile it even matters, and lets me be on my Clexa BS even harder! xD
> 
> . Everyone who joins me in being thirsty on main for John Dorie, rancher of my heart, thank you for having the right opinion. To me, he's the best thing about FtWD after.. well, obviously.


	11. Stumble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A rough night on the River Dorie.

Such are the things that  
Make a kingdom rumble and shatter  
The same dynamic that  
Another day would never matter

It really just depends on   
Who's giving and who's receiving  
And things that don't make sense   
Are always a little deceiving

Come and stumble me

\- Lights, " _River_ "

**Stumble**

It was a restless night all around.

Clarke and Alicia lay in one of the beds, their backs facing one another. John and June had been more than a little grateful to have the other bed back, and Charlie was once more curled up on the couch.

Alicia was tossing and turning, and occasionally emitting a low pitched whine from the back of her throat. Tormented by memories, probably; Clarke knew a thing or two about that. Waking her wouldn’t do anything but deprive her of sleep. When you’d done the kinds of things they had, seen the sorts of things they’d seen, been through what they had, you simply didn’t sleep as well anymore. That was just fact.

T _oo many ghosts_ , Madi had once said. Clarke couldn’t particularly disagree with the assessment, and she imagined Alicia would concur.

So she let the girl sleep; whines, whimpers, and all.

Tomorrow was a big day. John and June would be going to the hospital for supplies, and when they got back, Clarke would have to tell Alicia about the bite. All of that before going under for a risky surgery that she might not even survive. Combined with the mental torment she was inflicting on herself currently, and had been for the last several hours, the situation was not doing anything to relax her tension laced body and mind.

_So much for sleep_ , she thought as she rolled over to her other side again. It had been a bit of a pipe dream anyway, considering.

Just then, a soft _thud_ sounded from the living room, and Clarke rolled to face the door again, listening closely with a frown.

_Shuffle, shuffle, thunk._

"Ow, dammit," came a barely audible whisper.

_Shuffle, shuffle, squeaky front door hinge._

Clarke shot up out of bed, practically landing already inside her waiting boots as she pulled open the bedroom door. It was pouring buckets outside again; not to mention the night sky being midnight black, and with god only knew how many walkers roaming around or floating by on the River Dorie.

No way even a marginally sane person would go out in that, and Alicia was definitely tucked away in bed. That meant it could only be—

"Charlie," Clarke hissed, causing the young girl to turn her head back to the house, whose door she was already halfway out. "What are you doing? It’s the middle of the night."

"I know what time it is. I’m not stupid," the girl mumbled. "I thought everyone was asleep."

Clarke took the girl in for a moment, her exhausted brain processing everything more slowly than she would’ve liked as her eyes rapidly searched for clues.

_Ah, yes._

"You’re leaving?" Clarke’s eyes fell to the rucksack on Charlie’s back, and the knife and pistol holstered at her hip and thigh. "Are you nuts?"

"I’ve been on my own plenty," Charlie snapped in reply, letting the screen door close as she stepped onto the porch. "I’m not a little kid. I don’t need anybody to take care of me."

Hating life just a little bit, Clarke grabbed a jacket from the rack and put it on as she moved after Charlie.

"Charlie, _wait_ ," she called, but Charlie was moving quickly through the night. "Please? I just want to talk, and then if you still want to leave, I won’t stop you, okay?"

There was no response, and Clarke paused in the sky’s onslaught to look around, flinching at a particularly loud thunderclap. Her heels hit the mud-slick at the edge of the grass, and she lost her balance, skating awkwardly down the small curve of the ground before landing on her ass with a grunt.

"I’m gonna kill that kid myself," she muttered with gritted teeth.

She grabbed at the shifting ground, unsteadily climbing back to her feet. From somewhere just to her left, she heard a cry echoing through the pitch of night. It was followed up by panicked splashing, and Clarke began moving as quickly as she felt comfortable doing through the mud and muck, towards the frantic sounds.

"Charlie?" she cried, knowing if the girl had gone into the river in this weather, she had precious few seconds to find and retrieve her before she was swept too far downstream and went hypothermic.

"Charlie!" she screamed, jogging fast as she dared as she moved parallel to the shoreline.

Another scream from Charlie punctuated the night just before a streak of lightning soared by overhead, and Clarke didn’t pause to think for even a heartbeat. She kicked her unlaced boots aside as she waded into the river, her eyes rapidly searching her horizons in the blessedly bright moonlight.

There; halfway across the river, tangled up with some large branches, her pale face illuminated amidst the rushing water.

"Charlie, hang on! I’m coming!" Clarke yelled, loudly as she could. Charlie yelled something back—Clarke heard her voice just as she hit water too deep to walk in—but she couldn’t make out what it was, and there wasn’t time for an instant replay.

Shivering and with her skin already a somewhat unpleasant shade of cobalt, Clarke squinted through the pouring rain to orientate herself before bouncing off her toes and beginning to swim harder than she’d ever swam in her life.The water was beyond ice cold, it felt; the rain still more chilling as it pounded and poured into the rushing rapids all around her. Clarke’s arms were already straining against the raging tide when something she couldn’t see in the dark slammed into her as it was carried past by the river.

Clarke let out a pained cry, her body curling up instinctively beneath the surface of the water as she clutched her injured arm. Whatever it was had taken a chunk out; Clarke could feel her slick blood pouring into the water around her, could taste it as she cried out in pain and frustration through silencing air bubbles.

_Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter._

_Get to Charlie._

Clarke let out the last of her breath in the form of a primal underwater scream as she soared to the surface. The storm had really built up in the previous minutes, and Clarke felt herself slowly losing her admittedly tenuous grip on reality.

It wasn’t a river, but a basement. The struggling brunette off to the side wasn't Charlie, but Alicia. And Clarke, for her part, had become silly, useless little Clarke 2.0 again. Not a hero, but a pale copy of one.

In the few seconds she’d spent frozen in fear, the river had spun her sideways and was carrying her away. Clarke was pulled beneath the surface once more then, and she gasped, coughing in water as she clawed and groped in the murky dark for something; anything to hold onto.

_Maybe not **anything**_ , she couldn’t help thinking as something sturdy and human-shaped crashed into her, sending her spiraling under the water once more. For half a moment, she’d had hope in her heart that she’d inadvertently slammed into Charlie, but it was short-lived. Her fingers were wound around and through several sets of exposed ribs; de-fleshed, but the bones were still slightly greasy, even in the water.

Her fingers slipped then, taking a thick corded tangle of nerves and decomposing muscle tissue with them, and Clarke retched hard. She choked down what had to be a few more gallons of water before managing to spin both herself and the walker around, up, and past the surface break. She greedily gulped in a few breaths, holding the snarling, decomposed walker at arm’s length as she bobbed in the raging rapids.

"Charlie?" she screamed, twisting on the river’s surface with the walker in a front-facing bear hug.

"Clarke?" came the responding cry, this time from somewhere far off to Clarke’s right. "Clarke, hold on!"

Like she was planning to let go.

Clarke wrapped her arms tightly around the walker’s forehead, shimmying her way up his rotted body. Her left foot slipped, catching on the edge of his pelvic bone, and Clarke gagged once more as she grabbed another handful of loose tissue—which felt suspiciously like a kidney or maybe a liver—as she accidentally kicked his entire leg loose. Clarke watched it bobbing up and down in the churning waves as the river carried it away, dropping the suspected organ and promptly throwing up into a passing wave as she freed her foot.

She rolled over with the living corpse a few more times in the water, keeping her balance as best she could while using it’s semi-floatable body to keep her own head above the surface. She began kicking with everything she had, going perpendicular to the shore. There was no sense in fighting the current, and Charlie’s voice had come from the right, so that’s where Clarke was headed.

But her arms felt like they would tear off any moment, her legs were numb, and her brain was feeling foggy and defeated. The walker was too strong to continue wrestling with, and though she was pretty certain another bite wouldn’t kill her either, she didn’t particularly want to be test the theory. It might not kill her, but certainly it would hurt, and she’d definitely drown. Her jaw and mind set, Clarke made the call to shove the undead floaty toy from her body, sending him away downriver.

From the looks of it, he would have plenty of friends to keep him company. There were bodies and heads bobbing up and down in the flow in every direction Clarke could see. Another walker slammed into her, catching across her back. It reached for her, snarling and growling as they rolled in the rushing water, and Clarke took a deep breath and dunked herself under the water once more.

Clarke felt what had to be the silty bottom of the river swallowing the tips of her sock-clad toes, and she bowed her knees outwards just enough to take her landing a bit lower. When the pain in her hip reached its peak, she snapped her legs straight as arrows and shot to the surface like a bullet. She took in a deep gasp of fresh air just before a jolt of intense, shuddering pain slammed and shot through her head, and the entire world went dark.

👱🏻♀️♾👩🏻

The rain fell like shards of glass, pounding the metal box both rhythmically and relentlessly, like an aggressive concerto. The only other sound was the growling.

A lot of growling. Snarling, hissing, rasping, choking, snorting, and snuffling. There was another rhythmic sound too, now; a series of thumps and thuds, just barely irregular in their combined cadence. There was scratching, and then there was a quiet whimpering that joined the orchestra of horrors.

Clarke opened her eyes, immediately choking on the thick clog of saliva and who knew what else that had clotted up in her throat. Rasping as she gasped for air, her eyes settled on a shining metal blade being held right above her.

Behind the sliver of silver, steely blue eyes gazed upon her with worry, fear, and just the slightest amount of determination behind them.

"Charlie? Thank god," Clarke coughed, rolling onto her side. She’d forgotten about her hip, but was reminded when it came into contact with the hard floor she lay on. She let out a sharp gasp, and Charlie lowered the knife.

"I thought you were dead," Charlie said by way of greeting, pulling her knees to her chest.

Clarke spat a few times to clear her mouth of the mixture of water, blood, and she didn't want to think about what else.

"No such luck," she groaned, flopping onto her back again. "My head feels like it's killing me, though. What the hell happened?"

"You threw yourself into a rock," Charlie replied patiently, peering at the blonde over her folded knees. "When you came up."

Clarke bristled, just a little bit. She wasn’t completely useless, after all. "I didn't throw myself into a rock, I was _trying_ to launch myself into the _air,_ and--"

"You missed," Charlie finished, and Clarke could swear she saw just the slightest mischievous glimmer in the girl’s dark eyes.

"Guess so," Clarke groaned in response, sitting up and touching her head tentatively. There was a giant goose egg that would surely remain tender and bruised for awhile, but only a small amount of smeared dried blood surrounded it. "Thanks for saving me, Charlie."

Charlie just looked away from her, resting her arms and chin on her knees as she idly fingered her knife with a heavy sigh.

"Doesn’t matter. We’re gonna die anyway. Don’t you hear that?"

Clarke had, in fact, heard the apparently _massive_ herd of walkers that surrounded them currently. She didn’t have the courage to even try to peer out into the night for a visual, but it sounded at least three times larger than the herd that had trapped her, Al, and Alicia in the house.

Not good news, for sure.

"We’re not gonna die, Charlie," Clarke reassured the girl with only a little more certainty than she felt; which to be fair, wasn’t much. "We’ll get out of here."

"How?" Charlie asked patiently, running the tip of her thumb along the edge of her blade and watching her blood bead up around it.

"I don’t know yet, but we will," Clarke replied firmly, pushing herself up and finally peering out the windshield of the van. When the walkers— _and jesus christ on a cracker, were there a lot of them_ —caught sight of Clarke, their ravenous snarling intensified a dozen fold, and the SWAT vehicle began rocking on its tires as the wave of walkers surged with renewed hunger.

Mildly defeated, Clarke sank back into the shadows again, hoping the living corpses had the memory span to match their lowbrow hierarchy of needs and would soon forget about the potential dinner they’d caught a glimpse of.

"Trapped in a storm and surrounded by walkers. It’s like being stuck in purgatory, and I’m the guy pushing the same rock up the same hill over and over again for all eternity," Clarke muttered, mostly to herself, as she rubbed her face tiredly.

"That was Sisyphus," Charlie offered, her eyes darting nervously around the inside ofthe truck.

"You would really like my friend Bellamy," Clarke gave her a little smile.

Charlie picked at a piece of rubber sole peeling off her boot, flicking it back and forth with a single fingernail. "Which one’s he, again? The one Lexa made you kill?"

Clarke went completely still as the proverbial bottom dropped out, sending her spiraling through a rush of confused thoughts. "Wh—What? How did you—?"

She paused, cutting herself off mid-question as she realized that Charlie had done exactly what Madi would have done; what just about any kid with a marginal amount of curiosity would do in the situation.

"So, did you watch all of the tapes, or just mine?" Clarke asked with a crooked eyebrow.

Charlie's eyes lowered to the ground. "Alicia’s, too."

"That's why you ran away again? Because you saw Alicia's tape, heard the things she said about you?"

"I don’t want to talk," Charlie snapped, physically turning herself away from Clarke and ferreting a book from her cargo pocket.

"I don’t think that’s entirely true," Clarke suggested, tapping her finger against her leg and gritting her teeth.

Outside, the walkers and storm just outside surged against the wall of the van, and the massive vehicle shuddered, causing both occupants to freeze briefly. Thankfully, the armored truck remained solidly stuck to the ground, despite the tidal wave of undead and the mudslide that must be forming beneath it by then.

"What do you know?" Charlie replied dismissively, sticking her nose in her book. "You’re crazy."

"Yeah, maybe. But you’re the one who brought it up, didn’t you?"

Charlie glanced upwards then, her focus suddenly keen, as though she were considering something. Outside, the walkers, the river, and the storm were raging, but a slight, serene smile was slowly crawling across Charlie's chapped lips.

She reached over and grabbed Al's camera bag, answering for Clarke where Charlie had eaten her breakfast that morning, and set it down before Clarke.

"I'll talk," Charlie said decisively. "You record."

Clarke frowned. "I don't know if this is the best time for, you know.."

"We could go for a walk instead," Charlie made as if to move for the door, and Clarke rolled her eyes, putting her hands up in surrender.

"Okay, you talk, I record. But Charlie, you know.. the chances anyone will see these tapes.." Clarke trailed off guiltily. She didn’t want to dash her hopes, but Charlie was clearly a smart kid; smart enough to understand the high likelihood that the tapes would perish as surely as most of the people on them probably already had.

"Nobody has to see it. I don’t _want_ anyone to see it." Charlie looked back at her quietly, her voice softening, her face solemn. "That doesn't matter. All that matters is the truth. Whatever that is, the truth matters. We are what we are."

Clarke bit her lip with a decisive nod, trying to shake off the icy spikes shooting through her veins at the eerily familiar Lexa-ism, then shakily loaded a new tape into the camera. She fiddled with the buttons for a minute until she figured out how to work it, then propped the camera up across from Charlie.

"Rolling in three, two, one," Clarke depressed the record button, then faced Charlie once more as she took a deep breath to gather herself.

"What's your story, Charlie?"


	12. What We Are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie's story.

“They want to be natural, the anti-social little beasts.   
They just don't realize that everyone's good   
depends on everyone's cooperation.”

― Richard Adams, _Watership Down_

“Rabbit underground, rabbit safe and sound.”

― Richard Adams, _Watership Down_

**What We Are**

**Fort Worth, Texas,** **2010  
** _9 days before U.S. collapse_

"Charlie! I'm home! Dinner!"

Charlie groaned, rolling onto her back and scooting towards the edge. With her head hanging down the side of her bed and her hair dusting the floor, she called back through her opened bedroom door.

"Can I just finish this chapter first? _Pleeeease_?"

"Well, I guess so," her dad replied, the faintest hint of teasing already clear in his voice. "But your pizza might be cold by then."

Charlie moved the book above her brow and towards the floor as though she could see through the plush turquoise rug, and the dark-stained hardwood, and whatever else lay between the first and second floors of the house to verify the presence of pizza herself.She set a bookmark inside _Watership Down_ and placed it carefully beside her pillow before tumbling gracelessly off her bed and stumbling to her feet. She cruised down the short hallway and rounded the railing, sliding her fingers along it as she thudded down the stairs.

"Must have been an awfully short chapter," he teased her with a knowing grin.

"I think the rabbits of _Watership Down_ will understand that pizza is to me, as carrots are to them," Charlie grunted, rising to her tiptoes in an attempt to relieve her father of the grease-stained white box.

"Oh, good analogy. How do you like this one?" he asked, dangling the pizza box out of her reach as she began hopping up for it. "Pizza box is to carrot, as Dad is to stick."

Charlie gave up, crossing her arms and fixing him with what she hoped was her most unamused, pouting glare, muttering, "Maybe a stick in the mud.."

They looked each other down briefly, then burst into giggles at the same time. He handed her the pizza box and took off his coat, hanging it on the rack near the door. His keys on the intricately carved wooden series of key hooks that spelled out _Family_ in gentle, swooping letters. Wallet on the sideboard as you enter the family room.

"We are what we are. I’m proud to be an old stick in the mud," her father announced, sliding off his loafers and carefully lining them up beside Charlie’s ratty Converse All-Stars.The same routine, every day. Careful Cal, that’s what her mom called him; every move deliberate, like he was playing chess with the whole world, all the time.

But not with Charlie; never with Charlie. With Charlie, he might show up during the Language Arts block—her least favorite; all the reading out loud, and so _slowly_ , good grief—and sign her out of school for a nonexistent doctor’s appointment. They’d see a movie and eat out, or go to the pet store to play with the puppies. Twice, they’d gone to carnivals that had come to town, and once to a rodeo.

Mostly, though, they would go to Barnes & Noble and load up on Starbucks fare before finding a comfortable spot to camp out in. Abandoning their things, they would separate to scour the aisles for their next literary meal. Those were Charlie’s favorite days; the ones spent lounging in bean bag chairs at the book store, eating scones and paninis as they sat in the most comfortable of silences with their stories.

"I didn’t say you were old," Charlie pointed out, placing the pizza box on the coffee table before heading into the kitchen for plates.

"No, but you were thinking it, right?" Cal replied, setting his messenger bag in its designated spot on the computer desk.

Charlie paused in her plate retrieval, then shrugged and nodded. "Yeah, I was."

"Knew it."

Charlie joined him on the couch, setting out the plates, napkins, and cans of soda she’d retrieved.

"Mom’s worked late every night this week, you know," she said, wiggling back on the couch.

"I know," Cal replied, opening the box and beginning to separate one slice from the others as neatly as possible before lifting it to his plate. "The hospital’s beyond full capacity. They started diverting ambulances this morning."

Charlie grabbed the other side of the pie, pulling one-and-three-quarters of a slice messily onto her plate, dragging it over the edge of the pizza box as she did. She reached back to collect the cheese she’d left behind as well as the remainder of the second slice she'd ripped apart.

"In music today, Danny Gordon said his dad said there’s no infection, and it's just a government conspiracy like the moon landing and vaccines," Charlie offered, licking the grease from her fingers.

"Danny Gordon’s dad is a cretin," Cal responded easily, digging into his pizza with fork and knife in hand.

"I know," Charlie shrugged. "That’s what I told him. I just said stupid, though. Danny Gordon wouldn't know what cretin meant."

"Then Danny Gordon can Google the word cretin and learn," Cal replied, eying his daughter carefully. "Don't ever dumb yourself down for anyone. We are what we are, and what you are is _smart_. Smart and capable, my little Rabbit is. One of the two strongest women in the universe."

Charlie swallowed what she had in her mouth, setting down her slice and leaving behind a smear of sauce on her cheek. "Daddy, is Mom sick?"

"No, honey. Mom's not sick." Cal paused, slowly lowering his silverware to the table. He folded his hands beneath his chin, gazing at his precious, precocious child who was far too smart to be lied to.

"Is she going to get sick? From being around the infected people all the time?"

"I don’t know," he answered honestly. "We don’t know enough about the virus for me to answer that, or for anyone else to yet. But smarter people than me are working the problem. Until then, all we can do is hope, and stay positive, and know the hospital is taking every precaution possible. The whole world is working on a cure, and there's a lot of very smart scientists out there. So far, humans have bounced back from everything nature has thrown at us, and everything we've thrown at each other, so I like our chances."

"Not me. I like our chances if Mom was here with us, instead of with the sick people." Charlie continued eating her pizza, but with a great deal less enthusiasm. "I wish she wasn’t a nurse."

"Sometimes I wish that too, especially during scary times like right now." Cal leaned forward, waiting until Charlie met his eyes once more before speaking. "But Mom is a nurse because she wants to help people, people that not a lot of other people want to help right now. Mom is a nurse because she loves people, even if it’s not a safe time to love people. Even if people aren't safe to be around. That's why we love her. That's who Mom is."

Charlie sighed heavily. "We are what we are?"

Cal nodded. "That we are, always have been, and always will be. Now, why don’t you tell me more about these bunnies of _Watership Down_? What sort of hierarchy are they operating under?"

🧟♾🧟

**Fort Worth, Texas,** **2010  
** _2 days before U.S. Collapse_

> _This is a message from the Emergency Broadcasting System._
> 
> _This is not a test._  
>  _  
> __The Governor of Texas has officially declared a state of emergency._  
>  _The Governors of all 50 states have officially declared a state of emergency._
> 
> _The President of the United States has officially declared a national state of emergency.  
>  The President of the United States has officially declared a global state of emergency. _
> 
> _The United Nations has declared a global state of emergency._  
>  _The World Health Organization has declared a global state of emergency._  
>   
>  _All citizens within broadcasting range are hereby subject to a_ _mandatory emergency evacuation as required by Executive Order 15732._
> 
> _Please proceed to your nearest military checkpoint, where you will be provided_ _with food, water, medical care, hygiene facilities, safety, and further instructions._
> 
> _Civilians must proceed to checkpoints unarmed._  
>  _Civilians must proceed to checkpoints on foot._  
>  _Civilians must proceed to checkpoints without face coverings._  
>  _Strollers and other human transports may not have covers on them._  
>   
>  _Forbidden items include weapons, animals, illegal drugs or drug paraphernalia,_ _vehicles including bicycles, skateboards, scooters, mopeds, and ATVs;_ _children's play vehicles, covered strollers or carriers, and motorized_ _wheelchairs._
> 
> _These items will be permanently confiscated, pursuant to Executive Order 15732, and_ _violators will be held in prison for a period of no less than 90 days._
> 
> _Do not make noise._   
>  _Do not approach anyone who may be infected._   
>  _Do not attempt to fight the infected._   
>  _Do not panic, your safety is assured._
> 
> _God bless you, and God bless America._
> 
> _This message will repeat._

"Cal? Cal, did you grab Charlie’s inhaler?"

"Yes, I’ve got it in the blue duffel bag with the other pharmaceuticals and first-aid gear."

"I don’t need my inhaler, I haven’t used it since I was seven!"

"Charlie, please. Did you find those hiking boots Grandma Kay sent for your birthday yet?"

"Ye-es!" Charlie grunted loudly as she strained and struggled, trying to fit her purple-socked foot into the as-yet unworn shoe, her nails scraping over the L.L.Bean tag with a sound that made her shiver.

"But they don’t fit! I think she still thinks I’m seven, too. Can’t I just wear my Chucks? It’s not like we’re going camping, right? You guys said the refugee camps were just _named_ that.."

Cal and Penny paused at either side of their room, exchanging a glance with one another, before Penny called back, "I know, I just thought a sturdier shoe would be better. We might have to stand in line for a very long time to get into the camp. Cal, leave that one. It’s just the hygiene bag I started packing for Galveston."

Charlie stopped altogether, leaning forward with a look of confused disbelief, "Then doesn’t it make more sense for me to wear something that’s actually comfortable, instead of something that wants my feet to _die_ and fall off?"

Cal touched his temple lightly. "Of course. We weren’t thinking, Charlie. Just wear what’s most comfortable, but hurry up, okay?"

Charlie rolled her eyes, throwing aside the olive drab boots in favor of her ratty sneakers. She grabbed the handle of the roll-along suitcase they’d let her pack herself— _non-essentials,_ had been the word used, which Charlie found a little offensive. Books were definitely essentials, and so was her tablet and charger, for when they had electricity at the refugee camp. Her photo album, and the beaten up little rabbit rag doll she’d had since birth, and then more books. So many books, in fact, she could barely roll the little suitcase, but she stopped on her way out the door to grab her copy of _Little Women_ —previously set aside due to being a fairly hefty hardcover—and wedged it into the back slide pocket of her suitcase anyway.

Struggling with the overloaded little carry-on, Charlie made her way to the doorway of her parents room, but stopped dead in her tracks when she saw them holding each other—and _crying_.

"Dad? Mom?" They both glanced up, and each put an arm out for her. Suddenly feeling incredibly small and scared, Charlie bolted into their waiting grasp, her heart starting to pound in her chest as they enveloped her in their embrace. A few tears landed on the back of her neck, and she couldn’t tell who they belonged to, so tightly were they holding one another.

"We’re not going to the refugee camp, are we?" Charlie asked, in a voice so small it was barely even a voice at all.

"No, honey," her mother answered softly. "We think we have a better chance if we stay away from other people. All other people."

Charlie frowned, her newfound smallness bringing with it a sudden naivety that was also quite new to her. "But you love other people. You want to save them."

"Not as much as I love you," her mother whispered, kissing her head softly and repeatedly while rocking with her. "Not as much as I need to save you."

Charlie shut her eyes tightly as the first tears began to squeeze out. Her voice shook with fear as a broken whisper passed her lips. "Are you scared? You’re never scared."

It was her father who responded this time, with a tired, defeated tone, and nearly too soft to hear.

"We are what we are."

🧟♾🧟

**Texas, 18 miles outside Odessa,** **2010  
** _5 weeks after U.S. Collapse_

Charlie remained crouched in the drainage pipe, curled as close to the ground as she could get, with her palms pressed firmly to her ears, her father’s hands covering her own with increasing pressure.

It didn’t help much; she could still hear her mother’s screams as the infected tore into her flesh just above them, at the edge of the drainage ditch they cowered in. Charlie watched with horrified eyes as the puddle of blood pooling at her feet grew larger, and it took her a moment to realize the source was her mother’s detached arm. It hung from the top edge of the pipe, swaying in the breeze as it continued to leak blood, the familiar wedding band glinting in the unbearably bright sun.

Charlie threw up on her shoes, but the last of her mother’s screams above them must have drowned out the sound, because the infected didn’t notice.

As for Charlie, she didn’t notice either when Cal scooped her into his arms like a toddler and carried her deeper into the drainage pipe, into the dark, dripping and claustrophobic little hole. Charlie began to hyperventilate, her chest tightening to an impossible degree as she gasped and hiccuped for air.

Cal stopped and lowered to his knees, setting Charlie down carefully and cupping her cheeks as her panicked face scanned the dark, her choking sobs sending muted echoes up and down the sewer tunnel.

"Charlie? Charlie, look at Daddy. You’re okay, we’re safe here. Look around, where are we, Charlie?"

Charlie’s teeth slammed shut and she let out a strangled sob between them, her entire body stiffening in fear as her lungs clenched tightly shut.

_It was her arm and her hand and her ring and her blood. The arm that held me and checked for fevers and gave me a boost so I could see over the crowds at parades. The arm that made pancakes on the weekend, that ruffled my hair and manned the steering wheel on the way to school in the morning. Hands that had healed thousands of patients, cleaned and cared and reached out with uncommon gentleness to help._

"Charlie, where are we?"

Herr dad sounded panicked, and something about his voice snapped Charlie back to reality; at least, enough that she was able to look at their surroundings for the first time.

"U—Underground?"

"That’s right," Cal said, quickly checking his daughter over for injuries or worse while she was distracted. "And what do we say about being underground?"

Charlie blanked; she knew this. She knew she knew this.

_But then there was an arm, and a hand, and it was Mom’s and there was so much blood and screaming and—_

"Rabbit underground," Cal prompted her, dropping his bag and pulling it open. He began rummaging inside it, glancing up at Charlie every other second. "Charlie, rabbit underground.."

“R-Rabbit, safe and sound," Charlie whispered, her wide hazel eyes staring unseeingly into the near pitch of the tunnel.

Cal pulled out the flashlight and flicked it on, aiming the beam upwards so they could look into one another’s eyes again. He reached out with his free hand, wiping a few smudges of his wife’s blood from his daughter’s brow, and his voice was softer and more gentle than it had ever been, as far as Charlie could remember.

"Rabbit underground, rabbit safe and sound," he echoed, cupping her cheek briefly and wiping her tears away. "Ready, Rabbit?"

Charlie shook her head in the dark, but slid her hand into his anyway.

🧟♾🧟

**Texas, 13 miles east of the New Mexico border  
** _(Approximately) 1 year after U.S. Collapse_

**3:47 pm**

The injury on Cal’s arm was huge. Most of his wrist was gone, along with his thumb and forefinger. The wound stretched partway to his elbow, wrapping around his arm like a tattoo.

"It has to come off," he groaned deliriously, slumping against the cave’s wall. "Stop the spread."

Charlie poured alcohol onto the wad of rags in her other hand, wasting some of it due to the intensifying shakiness of her arm.

"It’s not a bite, you cut it on a rock, or with the machete," Charlie insisted, dropping the bottle and beginning to wrap her father’s arm like her mother had shown her their first week in the wild.

"Charlie.." He panted, trying to reach for her bowed head and grimacing with a hiss as the wet bandage came into stinging contact with his excoriated flesh. "Charlie please, we don’t have much time. I need.. I need you to take the machete for me, okay? And I.. I’ll walk you through it."

Charlie broke into sobs, her face crumpling as she gave up on the bandage and shrank from the proffered weapon. She rocked back on her heels, holding her knees and looking even younger than her eleven years.

"Daddy, no. I can’t."

Cal let out a sob of his own. "I’m so sorry, Rabbit. But I can’t do it myself. I know you can do it, my daughter can do anything."

Charlie took the machete with a reluctant and unsteady hand, wincing when the light from outside reflected off the incredibly sharp blade. A ringing started in her ears then, and it persisted and grew louder, muting the rest of the world as Cal explained exactly how and where she should try to land the edge of the blade, and then what she should do afterwards to prevent him from bleeding to death.

Charlie was listening, and understanding, but it felt more like he was communicating inside her head. All her ears could hear was the familiar sound of her mother’s voice as the unfamiliar rasps and groans being emitted in it had made their way into the drainage pipe that night in Odessa. All her eyes could see was how her mother’s de-fleshed, one-armed body had crawled into the tunnel while they slept.

Her hands choked up on the machete then, like her father’s elbow was a split-finger fastball and she was on the last pitch of the world series. Charlie let out a primal scream as she brought the blade down with all of her might on her father’s arm and everything that made her a child.

**1:28 am**

Charlie rocked slowly by the fire, feeding it the small twigs and handfuls of leaves that lay scattered around the area. She chewed dazedly on the gummy worms they’d found at a pharmacy two days ago—twelve whole bags of them—and wondered if she was in shock, or if shock could even last this long.

Her dad was snoring inside the back of the car they’d holed up inside when Cal could walk no longer. The stump of his arm was wrapped tightly with fresh bandages, his skin was pale, and his snores were punctuated with little wheezes emitted in time with the dance of the flames just outside.

Charlie had tried to read the only book she owned now, but even _Watership Down_ was a cold comfort after throwing her father’s bitten arm into the creek outside the cave earlier. It had been his left-sided arm, and part of Charlie entertained a romantic but macabre fantasy of it floating down the creek and somehow finding her mother’s arm, decaying fingers entwined as they allowed the disembodied bits of her parents to be together once again.

That was a fairy tale Disney sure wouldn’t be interested in, but Charlie thought it was kind of poetic, even if just in a really weird, messed-up kind of way. So what? She was weird and messed-up now, too.

"We are what we are," she whispered to herself, flicking a stick into the flames.

A rasping noise sounded in response, and Charlie’s head whipped around in search of the source of it. The moon was fairly bright, and she could see most of the area surrounding the silo; it was just as clear as it had been all night.

Charlie let out a scream as her father’s weakened body tumbled from the back of the station wagon, landing half on her and half in the fire. Her father hissed and growled his putrid breath into her face as she crab-walked backwards from the fire as quickly as she could, trying to free herself from beneath Cal’s crushing weight on her legs.

"Dad? Dad!" Charlie cried, pushing at his broad shoulders. His pants legs were on fire now, and it had already spread to Charlie’s own rucksack and up a dangling jacket sleeve to the tailgate of the wagon.

"Daddy, stop!" Charlie pleaded, sobbing and hiccuping as the heaving groans and rasping snarls filled her ears and Cal’s teeth clacked loudly in her face. "Please, Daddy! I’m scared! I don't want to! I don't want to! Please!"

Charlie wasn’t sure what moment it was exactly when she realized that she was going to die; which moment she realized that, even after everything she’d seen and done, she still couldn’t bring herself to kill the thing that had stolen her father’s body. Not when it still looked so much like her father. Not when it meant she would be alone from then on.

She couldn’t; she just couldn’t.

And then, somehow, Charlie’s hand found its way to her hip and unsnapped the holster there. Her fingers fumbled as her body was wracked with sobs, her other arm almost buckling under the pressure of keeping her father’s ravenous corpse at arm’s length.

Charlie swallowed thickly and sobbed, "I’m sorry, Daddy, I'm sorry!"

Then she pressed the pistol to the monster's temple and pulled the trigger.

**4:47am**

_Had **that** really been a part of her all along?_

🧟♾🧟

**Texas, 12.5 miles east of the New Mexico border  
** _Two Months Later_

"It’s okay, kid. I'm not gonna hurt you, I swear."

"Don’t come near me! I’ll smash your head open like a watermelon!"Charlie gritted her teeth and choked up on her baseball bat, widening her stance a little. 

The man she was facing off with just chuckled at her threat. "I like your style, and I’ve got no doubt you could take me out. How long have you been alone?"

Charlie’s eyes darted nervously across the landscape, searching for additional intruders or dangers. "I’m not alone. There’s a _lot_ of us, and you’re about to get your ass kicked really hard by every single one of us."

"I’ve been watching you. Your name is Charlie, right?"

Charlie took a step back, faltering slightly, fear crossing her face. "How do you know my name?"

The man gestured at her feet. "Written on your shoe. Before everything happened, I had a daughter about your age. She liked those basketball shoes, too, but she was an artist. She’d draw all over those shoes, use every single color marker she could find."

Charlie hesitated; just a little bit. Mostly because she couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard her own voice, much less speaking actual words. 

"We have markers, the group I’m with," he continued. "We have anything you could possibly want. Not just food, water, and weapons. We have working music players, books and toys, the highest quality blankets and beds you’ll find this side of the Rio Grande. For now, anyway."

"For now?" Charlie asked suspiciously, rocking on her heels a little bit. "What does that mean, for now?"

"For now, we’re on this side of the Rio Grande. Next month, we might be on the other side, or we might move off towards Oklahoma. Maybe head to Galveston and check out the beach. Who knows?"

"You don’t have a camp?" Charlie frowned, her fingers adjusting their grip on her bat unsurely.

"We keep moving. Stay ahead of the undead, collect what remains from the dead. From new settlements that failed, because all settlements fail. It’s morbid, maybe, but they aren’t using it anymore. We’re like Vultures; nature’s little cleanup crew. And we keep moving. Movement is life."

The man put his hand out to Charlie. "I’m Ennis."

She slowly lowered her bat, glancing between the burned out husk of a car she’d been living in, then at the first human being she’d seen since her father had died—at least, the first that hadn’t tried to kill her on sight.

It was dangerous and a huge risk; she knew that. Trusting was always dangerous now, was always a mistake. But trusting was who Charlie was, who she had always been. Trusting was one of the parts of herself that her parents had begged her to fight to hold onto, even in this world. _Especially_ in _this_ world. The parts that her dad had told her would always be inside her if she just searched hard enough, because matter couldn't be created or destroyed, and everything was matter. And if everything was matter, then everything mattered, all of it. But especially the truth, because what was anything else worth without truth?

Not to mention that trusting and loving other people was all she had left of either of her parents—that, and a dog-eared copy of _Watership Down_ tucked in her cargo pocket beside her parents’ wedding bands.

Trust and truth was all Charlie had left of herself, as far as she could tell, but maybe the rest was buried somewhere beneath the bad, too. Like the second step of a quest; she just couldn’t see those parts of herself until she hit the bottom of the first layer. Her father had said all you were was always there inside you. Matter couldn’t be created or destroyed; only changed.

If Charlie had changed—and most certainly, she had—then maybe she could change back; become that little girl with her nose in a book and someone to take care of the scary stuff, someone to keep her safe. Someone she could depend on. Someone who could help her find the person she used to be, the person she must still be somewhere inside.

_We are what we are. It's all there, always. The good, the bad, and the ugly._

Charlie stuck her hand out.

"I’m Charlie."


	13. What Lives Inside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke and Charlie talk about the big things: philosophy, vengeance, family, hope, and human nature. And also socks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: (brief) suicidal ideation, existential depression
> 
> thank you so much for reading and kudos-ing and commenting, you've no idea how much it keeps me inspired! y'all are rock stars. have an excellent and safe weekend, fam. ❣️

There is a strength in enduring  
This is a call to your arms  
To take on mind over matter  
We are disappearing

You will be all that I seek in a twisted light  
I would live inside you  
Words will be all that I keep in an open space  
They would live inside you

\- CHVRCHES, _"Dead Air"_

“You know how you let yourself think that   
everything will be all right if you can only   
get to a certain place or do a certain thing?

But when you get there,  
you find it's not that simple.”

― Richard Adams, _Watership Down_

**What Lives Inside**

Charlie stood on the porch, soaked to the bone and shivering.

"Charlie? Thank god you came back."

"I didn’t."

Charlie swallowed hard, her fingers clenching on either hand as she prepared to do something she swore she would never, ever do again. Especially in this world. And she was doing it for someone else.

So, two things she’d sworn she would never do again, then.

Her gaze flicked back and forth between John and June’s a few times as she gathered herself.

"I’m here cause I need your help. It's Alicia."

♾

When they got to the house, John Dorie’s truck gave a shuddering wheeze, jerking all three occupants to a sudden halt. June was already opening the door and dashing out into the storm, and Dorie left the truck running when he saw where she was headed.

Charlie watched their blurry figures through the waves of rain sweeping violently across windshield as they knelt before the prone bodies on the ground. Her eyes fell to the ignition of the truck, where the single key was sticking out, then back to the figures bent beside the house.

She’d brought them to Alicia and the other girl, and they weren’t all that far from John’s forest hideaway. The storm had dissipated to only a moderately aggressive rainfall and would be less than a drizzle within the hour, no doubt. Surely they could take it from here, though certainly the truck would make things far easier.

Charlie slid into the driver’s seat, her fingers grazing the tarnished brass key and then the edge of the steering wheel. She stretched her leg out, testing the distance between the seat and pedals and sliding her hands around the wheel with a bit more confidence.

"Charlie! Bring the kit and some blankets, _tout-de-suite_ if you please," Dorie called out to her, and she froze with the tip of her sneaker on the gas, her hand on the gearshift.

_Just leave, just go. I can be free again. Alone. I can be alone again. If I stay, Alicia will kill me. I deserve to die, anyway. Maybe it’s better that way. She won’t let me come back, no matter how much she hates me._

Charlie grabbed the kit and slung a stack of wool blankets over her shoulder as she hopped from the cab of the truck.

"Coming!"

🧟♾🧟

An hour before dawn, Charlie broke down.

It was understandable; obviously. She was a scared kid, surrounded by a herd of walkers with little to no hope of seeing said dawn. Clarke was just a scared adult in the situation, and the constant chorus of groans and growls of hunger were starting to push her quickly in an ugly direction herself.

"We're gonna die here."

"We won’t."

"No, we won’t. _You’re_ gonna die here. I’m gonna turn here, which is worse."

"Charlie, it's gonna be okay."

Charlie folded in on herself as thunder echoed directly above their heads. The lightning that flashed before the subsequent thunderclap cast just enough light for several of the walkers to see their desired prey again. The herd surged against the side of the van, rocking it violently on its wheel, and the vehicle slid half an inch in the soggy mud gathering in pools around the hefty tires.

Charlie and Clarke cried out in unison, and the walkers roared at the sound. The scratching and rasping growls grew louder and more insistent, and Charlie began to shake as the first tears escaped.

"It’s okay to be scared, Charlie. But we’re gonna make it through this, okay? I promise."

"You can’t promise, nobody can," Charlie insisted through her rapidly intensifying sobs. "They’re gonna push us into the river, and we’re gonna drown, or they'll get inside, and I _can’t be like them!_ I won’t. _"_

Charlie’s voice broke severely on the latter part of her declaration, and she hiccuped violently as the sobs overtook her hunched body. Clarke leaned in, wrapping her arms around the girl. Charlie gave a great shudder, trying to pull away, but Clarke held tightly to her.

"Let go!" Charlie yelled, corkscrewing her body violently in Clarke’s grasp.

Clarke ignored her, wrapping her hand tightly around the girl’s slim wrist, and clamping down hard on it.Charlie had a surprising amount of physical strength for someone her age and size, and Clarke, wearing a body that had eaten nothing but a few packs of ramen and several steaks for her entire life, struggled to overtake her.

"What are you _doing?_ You’re crazy!" Charlie shrieked as the van rocked sideways once more under the surging wave of walkers. She bent to the side in an attempt to roll out from beneath Clarke, but Clarke followed her, using her entire body to pin Charlie against the floor. She slid her hand down further, her fingers wrapping around Charlie’s own, and then the butt of the gun resting in Charlie’s unsnapped holster.

"Let go of the gun, and I’ll let go of you," Clarke informed her, putting all of her weight behind holding Charlie’s arm down. "I know what you want to do, and I won’t let you. Give me the gun, Charlie."

"Please," Charlie’s eyes were wide and pleading, and she stopped struggling, but doubled down on her grip around the weapon. "I can’t be like them, Clarke. I’d rather be dead than one of them."

"I’m not going to let you do it," Clarke replied, her voice betraying her fear more than she’d anticipated. She dug her nails into Charlie’s hand, and the girl let out a yelp, her fingers flexing instinctively. Clarke ripped the gun from its holster and quickly jammed it into her waistband before releasing Charlie.

Charlie, despite being freed, remain still where she lay in her pile of blankets and continued to sob, choking on her tears and hiccuping for breath in between. It was several minutes before her sobs began to grow softer, weaker, and more exhausted.

"Then you do it," she commanded Clarke, pushing herself up unsteadily with a final hiccup.

"Absolutely _not_ ," Clarke replied, watching Charlie climb to her knees.

"Please, Clarke! It’s what I want, and it's what Alicia wants, too. You'll be her hero," Charlie insisted, the edge of her hoodie clenched tightly in both shaking fists. "Then she won't even care about your nightblood, or your crazy stories anymore."

"I won’t," Clarke answered sharply. "And trust me, _this_ is not what Alicia or anyone else wants. There’s nothing on this planet or any other that’s gonna get you what you want right now. You can try to fight me for the gun, but you won’t win. You’ll have to kill me to get it, because we are _not_ dying here, Charlie."

"Have you ever even killed a walker yourself?" Charlie asked, the exhaustion clear on her face as she wiped away her slowing tears.

Clarke slowly turned to look at her, trying desperately to mask the fear on her face with reassurance. "The van will be fine until morning, and so will we. The sun will be up soon, and the others will figure something out. They'll help us."

"Yeah. Right," Charlie replied quietly, her arms crossed. She glared from her nest of blankets and bags in the corner of the van. "Is that what you want, anyway? They're good people, do you really want them to face a herd of walkers and probably die trying to rescue a killer and a crazy?"

"We're both killers," Clarke corrected. Charlie didn't reply, and Clarke leaned forward to grab a protein bar from Al's stash. She unwrapped it deliberately, watching the girl out of the corner of her eye as she added nonchalantly, "And you're not exactly the picture of sanity yourself either, short stack."

Charlie looked confused for a moment; then defensive. "I'm _not_ crazy."

Clarke raised an eyebrow as she bit into the bar. "You left a safe, warm house filled with steak and people who care what happens to you in the middle of the night. You dove into a river, and got caught in a herd--which, in case you were wondering, probably didn't show up just because I followed you outside. So you would have wound up in here anyway. And I bet you didn't even remember to pack clean socks."

"How do you know what I packed?" Charlie looked even more confused and glanced at her bag, which was still behind her, serving as a makeshift pillow. 

Clarke shrugged. "I had a 12 year old daughter. Kids don't think about socks."

Charlie frowned, folding her hands on her lap and fiddling nervously with her shoelaces. "You didn't talk about her in your interview."

"No," Clarke met her eyes, her voice soft and serious. "Because that tape isn't my whole story. There's always more. To our stories, and to us. Sometimes it's hidden so deep inside we can't even remember it's there. But then sometimes something reminds us of a part of ourselves we didn't even know was missing."

"Like a pair of socks in a bugout bag." Clarke tugged from her pocket the pair of mismatched socks John Dorie had given her earlier. She'd forgotten they were in the coat, but it made sense. It had been a reflex to stash the extra footwear somewhere for a later need; a reflex to forget she'd never see Madi again.She tossed the socks--one with a cartoon superhero with what appeared to be bat-related powers, the other red and blue argyle print-- to Charlie, who caught them easily, but looked more mystified than ever.

"In case you still decide to leave. I could never convince Madi of something once her mind was made up, but I always made sure she had extra socks, at least," Clarke said, a sad smile on her lips as she watched Charlie unfold the socks and carefully smooth them across her knee.

"Thanks. But there's no way that's true," she informed Clarke decisively.

Clarke swallowed the bit of protein bar lingering on her tongue. "Why the hell else would I have socks in my pocket, Charlie?"

Charlie mulled it over for a moment, then shrugged. "Fair point."

"Thank you. Now, come on. Eat something. Gotta keep our strength up so we can help the others deal with the herd come morning. You want chocolate or the last peanut butter?"

"Peanut butter."

Clarke tossed her a protein bar. "Besides, if I was gonna lie to you, don't you think I could come up with something more creative than socks?"

"Yeah, it was pretty lame. Should have added more space travel, or some sword-fighting."

Clarke rolled her eyes. "You sound just like Alicia now. And not in a good way."

Charlie paused in the midst of unwrapping her bar. "Do you really think I'm crazy?"

"What?"

"You said I wasn't the picture of sanity."

Clarke sighed, feeling guilty for being flippant with the girl; particularly about such a valid concern. "I shouldn't have said that, and I'm sorry. I asked June the same thing, you know. If she thought I was crazy. I'm gonna tell you the same thing she told me: everyone left alive now is a little crazy. I mean, we live in a world where dead people are trying to eat us, full sanity’s not really a workable option at this point."

"But you're not the _dangerous_ kind of crazy, Charlie."

Charlie let out a little snort, averting her gaze to the opposite corner of the vehicle and crossing her arms with a glare.

"I know you think you are. You think you're a monster, and you don't deserve to be around people. You think you should be alone, or dead, so you can't hurt anyone else; so nobody else gets hurt for you or from you. I know that's what you think, because it's what I think, every single day. Every night."

"Their faces haunt me too. The ones I’ve killed, the ones I couldn't save. People who are just gone, who just went missing from my life one day. My daughter, my parents. Every face, every death, on repeat, all the time. Until you can't even remember anymore how things really happened. What was real, and what parts are just in your nightmares. Until you question everything you know about yourself and your actions."

"Could I really not get there in time, or was I just too slow to react?

_TonDC was on fire, dozens dead already._

"Did I have to run away, or hide, or should I have stayed? Should I have made the other impossible choice instead?"

_Wanheda could have stopped Pike if only she'd stayed Clarke._

"Should I have trusted more?"

_What if she'd been ready to give Lexa her heart the first time they'd kissed?_

"Did I have to kill them? Was there something else, something that wouldn't have ended with blood? Was there a conversation to be had instead, words that could have changed it?"

_Was there a better way?_

Finn's blood on her hands.

"Could I have helped?"

_Blood must have blood._

_Really? Because from where I stand, the only way that ends is with everyone dead._

"But the question we really have to ask ourselves is, did revenge make me feel better?"

Charlie turned a calm, but curious eye to Clarke. "So did it?"

_Did it make_ **_you_ ** _feel better, Clarke?_

**_Did it?_ **

🧟♾🧟

_Clarke! Your people need you!_

_You_ **_are_ ** _my people._

Clarke's gun shakes in her hand as the tears burn salty tracks down her cold cheeks. She stares at the man; the man she killed, the man she had murdered so unflinchingly. She stares at the through-and-through on Lincoln's upper chest, barely a breath from fatality, and his look of relief rips a painful path through her heart.

_He's surprised I didn't kill him, because he expected me to. He thought I would kill him to get to that Mount Weather piece of shit, or at least let him die._ _Like Lexa and I let those people in TonDC die. Like we might've just let Octavia die._ _He didn't know he was my people, too. I never showed him that; I never showed Lexa either. I have to show her that she's my people too. We might die out here and she'd never know how I feel._

_Did I just kill someone in cold blood?_

_I didn't even hesitate._

Lincoln presses a clump of something he pulls from a tree into his wound, attempting to staunch the flow of blood. His flesh emits a foul stench and a painful sizzling sound as he packs the hole in his shoulder with the seemingly acidic flora and barely a grimace.

"Did that make you feel any better?" Lexa is clearly directing the question to Clarke's ocean eyes and not Lincoln's hunched back, and her gaze is concerned, but knowing. The question is meant to be rhetorical because they all know the answer, but she seems to want to hear it in Clarke's own tongue. She must have known then--the way Clarke knew now--that if you didn't admit it aloud, remind yourself and often, the knowledge didn't take. You would get stuck in the cycle forever, always believing the next kill would fix the hurt inside.

And how could you make cunning choices if your shoulders were already weighted down with all the revenge you desired--no; _needed_ , to take? How would you ever get anything else done, how could you ever see clearly again? How could you lead your people if you were constantly chasing what you believed to be the penultimate, heady high of vengeance?

It was not, Clarke realized after a beat, a lesson in, ' _Killing people doesn't make you feel better so it's not worth it_.'

The lesson here was, ' _Blood must have blood. Take what you and your people are owed, but do so with the knowledge that no amount of the enemy's wretched blood will ease the ache inside you. Take your blood vengeance; take it in the vested interest of your people, for their honor and pain. For their sacrifices. Do what you know you must_ ** _because_** _you must, but always remember that nothing will fill the massive crater left behind by the missile of leadership. It's a gnawing, unbearable emptiness.'_

_That's what it means to be a leader, Klark._

_We bear it so they don't have to._

Clarke gulps hard before replying to a pair of searing emerald eyes she knows will slice right through any attempt she makes to hide the truth they already know and share. They'll inevitably release a focused gaze that will tear through her innermost self as surely as bullets tear through flesh and reveal the festering, bloodied wounds of truth beneath anyway.

Why make it uglier than it had to be? Lexa _sees_ her already; sees what she is, sees the darkness inside. Lexa sees the monster, and she isn't afraid of it. Which is sort of nice, but it's also the thing terrifying Clarke most of all at the moment.

"No," she finally answers, and perhaps a bit _too_ honestly.She wishes Lexa would stop looking at her in that annoyingly intuitive way she has, but she's far too tired to lie, and she imagines that will only intensify the look anyway.

The sole of her left boot is peeling off, and the ringing in her ear from the explosion earlier doesn't seem to be dissipating any time soon. She's exhausted, dehydrated, lightheaded with hunger, and physically weaker, she thinks, than ever before. She also thinks she might have broken rib six or seven, and she is absolutely _fucking_ freezing. She can't remember when she last slept or even sat down, so theoretically it shouldn't take much to improve her disposition.

And yet she doesn't feel betterat _all._

She pictures the woman carrying her own arm and the horse--that beautiful, cosmic creature--burning. Feels ruthless, feels like a killer; but then she feels like a killer because she **is** a killer. She's become a monster, and Lexa sees it quite clearly now that it's not able to be hidden behind the guise of mercy. Lexa knows what it means and how it feels, and so does Lincoln, because they've both been monsters, too.

They're both _still_ monsters, and now so is Clarke.

And anyway, mostly their parents and their societies and their upbringings-slash-brainwashings; the years of war and strife, the ripping away of childhoods far too soon, or perhaps just life in general--all of that had made them this way. They hadn't _any_ of them been given much choice in who they'd become. 

Lexa's eyes trail over the smoky, burning horizon, lingering just a bit too long at the ruined village and already-expanding mass gravesite being dug alongside it, before she whispers to Clarke under her breath, "I know."

_All monsters are human._

♾

Looking back, Clarke couldn't help but think of Roan, cauterizing his own abdominal wound using a red hot knife's edge without flinching; thought again of Raven screaming through marrow aspirations and anesthetic-less surgery. Proof positive that everyone could be a monster when it became necessary. A tenderfoot couldn't survive such atrocities; couldn't bear them.The monsters could bear it gladly, but nature would balance things; that was the tricky part. Evolution was a give and take sort of game, and inevitably what made you hard in some places would by design and necessity, harden other things.

For instance, if you were the sort of person with the fortitude to stitch your own leg after losing a fight with a bear trap, then quite often you were also the sort of person who had few reservations about forcing a mind drive of questionable stability into the skull of a person you knew it would kill horribly.

And vice versa.

Emerson's death hadn't been the startling thing about that moment, by the way; violent and uncomfortable though it was. No, what had thrown Clarke was how easy it had been to stand quietly and watch him die. She'd simply had to do nothing; just wait for his brain to liquefy, for the end of a cruel and wasted life. She'd felt no remorse or pity for the man or the actions she'd taken to put an end to him.

All she'd felt was a bittersweet sense of satisfaction. She'd spared this shithead's life under circumstances that she felt had ultimately led to Lexa's death. Her mercy towards the undeserving man had been--in many ways--Titus' breaking point. And in some of her more dire hours, Clarke imagined that she had quite _literally_ traded Lexa's life for Emerson's.

And this-- _this_ \--was how that act of mercy had been repaid?

Perhaps there had even been a small flutter of.. Not quite joy, but a distant relative of it, when she had stared down at his prone body, groaning out the last of his death rattles.If anyone had turned to her then, as her friends exited the airlock with skin and lips still hypoxia blue, and asked her if watching Emerson's brains leaking out of his ear and pooling near her left boot had made her feel better, Clarke would have said no again.

But she would have been lying. Because deep inside her most primal self, in her most honest heart of hearts? It _did_ make her feel incrementally better, if only for a moment. And a moment could be worth so much, particularly to a soul caught in a life made up almost entirely of darkness and destruction; the endless, needless, death and devastation. The one constant in Clarke's life was the inevitability of yet another impossible choice that would cost lives one way or another.

In the moment she had destroyed everything that made Emerson _himself_ , it did in fact feel a little bit like justice. It felt like a man who had caused so much suffering was finally brought to bear witness to his own crimes, and then made to sleep in the bed he had chosen; a bed his ancestors had unwittingly made for him.

It did help, just a little bit, with the gnawing, infinitesimal pain of losing Lexa; and frankly _just a little bit_ was more than Clarke had ever thought she could hope for when it came to surviving in the aftermath of Lexa.

Emerson was, Clarke felt, a prime example that sometimes death was necessary. There were people who would hurt or destroy others simply because they could, people that were monsters _all the time_ ; not just to survive. And when you inevitably came face to face with those _professional_ monsters, those lifelong atrocity-committers and all-the-time evildoers; when you encountered those soulless creatures and their following bands of merry assholes, those soldiers without convictions--you had _damn_ well better be ready to play at that level. Otherwise it was a simple-to-predict outcome: you wouldn't survive the encounter.

Some monsters needed killing for the good of all. But then again, when it came to humans, that was always true; there were always monsters of that caliber, and society had always tried to remove the threat in one way or another. The monsters they could see, anyway.

Did any of those full-time monsters _know_ they weren't just _sometimes_ monsters anymore? Doubtful; everyone was the hero of their own story. So if not, then how could you possibly ever know when you'd crossed the line, until it was too late? Until the line was already behind you?

Could you become nothing _but_ a monster and not even realize it?

A lifetime of experience, and Clarke still didn't know the answer; no more than she could claim to know where that line was herself, nor whether she'd crossed it already.

🧟♾🧟

"Did it make _you_ feel better?" Clarke countered. "I'm betting that's why you killed Nick, isn't it? Revenge for something. Probably for someone."

Charlie already had silent but steady streams of tears on both her rounded cheeks again, and she looked more vulnerable than ever as Clarke went in for the metaphorical kill.

"It's not your fault, Charlie. _Nothing_ that has happened to you is your fault. You're a child; you are someone's _child._ " Clarke shook her head a bit before continuing. "They just wanted to keep you safe and let you stay a kid, the way it was supposed to be. But since they died trying to protect you, don't you think they would want you to be where there are other people who want you to be safe? People that want to cook you ostrich eggs for breakfast, and teach you to fish. People who'll scold you for wandering off without saying anything."

"The kind of also-slightly-crazy people who care enough to follow you out into the night despite being _very_ tired, and jump into a river full of undead cannibals, and end up trapped in a tank with a concussion and no chance of sleep. People who, even after all that, will still give you fresh socks and the last peanut butter protein bar," Clarke added dryly.

When Charlie let out a small laugh through her tears, it felt like a gold medal of honor being pinned to Clarke's bursting chest. That tiny, reserved, and sad but genuine little laugh from Charlie--just like the first time Madi approached Clarke on her own, face to face--was worth _everything_ in that moment.

"I won't treat you like a little kid and play mind games and try to sit on you to keep you from leaving. I think you're too smart for all that, and there's no way we can keep you where you don't want to be without locking you in the shed. And that would severely limit our access to the booze and jerky. So that's not even an option, really."

Charlie offered her a tiny smirk, and it also felt pretty good.

"I can ask you to stick it out a little while longer, though. I mean, you kind of owe me now. And hell, if you get really sick of us, you can leave anytime anyway, right?"

"I guess." Charlie didn't seem convinced, but she did seem to be struggling with reservations, and Clarke pressed forward carefully.

"Then give me, say, another two weeks. If you still wanna go, I'll help you pack. Make sure you have plenty of socks."

"Two weeks? These days that's the same thing as saying I'll never leave. I'll give you two days, and today counts."

Clarke sat back, taking a bite of her bar. "One week, and you can have the can of soda in my bag back at the house."

_That_ piqued her interest. "Where did you get soda?"

"Vending machine at the place I met Alicia. We loaded our bags up after Al rescued us, and that can of soda is all that survived the hurricane. I was looking forward to it, but it's yours if you promise to stay for a week."

"Three days, I get the soda _and_ the book you were reading earlier." Charlie paused, thinking about it before adding, "And you don't tell anyone I was gonna leave tonight."

Clarke narrowed her eyes. "Final offer. Five days, I don't tell anyone, and you get the soda, the book, and the other half of this delicious and very much the last remaining, peanut butter protein bar. And you can't leave all sneaky in the middle of the night, either."

"You're a pretty good haggler," Charlie narrowed her eyes back, then stuck her hand out. They shook. "Deal. Hand it over."

Clarke smugly took another small bite of the half bar before surrendering it, and Charlie snatched it with an indignant look.

"Also, they weren't ostrich eggs."

"What?"

"You said before that people wanted to make me ostrich eggs. We don't even have ostriches here. They're whooping crane eggs."

"Right. Cause that's an important distinction we wanna be real clear on. _Which_ species of large, mean, mama bird John's been stealing eggs from. Although he does think there's a chance you have something against whooping cranes."

"Cranes are fine. I just don't like eggs."

Clarke fixed her with a steady gaze. "Well, in that case, maybe you _are_ crazy."

Charlie smiled a little bit, then interlaced her fingers together and grew solemn.

"How does it work, Clarke? If revenge doesn't make us feel better and we know it, but we still try to get it anyway, and nothing makes us feel better, what's the point? What's the point of any of it? Why survive just to be a monster, even if it is only sometimes?"

"I.." Clarke sighed, but still opted for the admittedly disappointing truth. "I don't know Charlie. People have been trying to answer questions like that since we walked on all fours. Gonna take someone smarter than me to figure it out, that's for sure. So I guess we just keep choosing life until someone does."

Charlie leaned forward, looking at her intently and replying, "But I want to know what _you_ think. Why _you_ keep going. You're a monster, right? And you lost everybody you cared about."

Clarke's voice grew soft, and she was sure to hold Charlie's gaze. "Because I only _thought_ that's how things were. Turns out there are more people I care about. I just didn't know I cared about them until recently. And I never would have known if I'd given up when I wanted to."

Charlie studied her quietly for a minute. "I have another question."

"Shoot."

"What makes us different from the monsters outside the van? They're trying to survive, too. What makes you think we can beat them?"

"Because," Clarke shrugged. "They're the ones outside the van. They don't even know how to get inside the van, but we know how to _drive_ the van."

Charlie didn't appear to be entirely following Clarke's train of thought, so she elaborated. "We can communicate complex messages and work with other people towards common goals. These guys, Charlie? They're definitely dangerous. Incredibly scary. More disgusting than anything has a right to be. I'm also confident they're the worst smelling thing in the universe. But you know what they _aren't_? Smart. They can't formulate a plan or understand the logistics of a doorknob. They can't swim--that one i've confirmed personally--or solve problems. They don't question _anything_ they do, Charlie. They'd blindly follow the sun off a cliff, because they aren't trying to survive. All that matters is their next meal. They don't even know what tomorrow is."

Clarke pointed towards the front of the vehicle, through the windshield, at the raging herd. "We can beat _these_ guys once the sun is up, because we have help. And I know humankind can find a way to outlast all of their kind, until someday when the ground is livable again."

"But _how_ do you know, Clarke? How do you know that we can outlast the end of the world?"

"Because in my world, we've already done it more than once. Humans _survive_. And most importantly?" Clarke leaned forward, holding Charlie's gaze to ensure she grasped the seriousness of her next words.

"This isn't the end of anything, and the good guys are still alive. That means there's hope. That's how I know."

"The world is dying, and so are all of us. So it doesn't matter if you're a good guy or a bad guy, cause either way you'll be a dead guy." Charlie picked violently at her shoelace to punctuate the statement.

"If you're right, and the world is dying, then who we are is the _only_ thing that matters. Our truth. What our people see when they look at us. Monsters can still try be good guys, Charlie, and good guys can still make mistakes and bad choices. In fact, all of them do."

"So, what? You just woke up one day and decided to be a good guy? Even when this is what the world looks like now?"

Clarke thought of Bellamy and the stash of guns all those years ago; the odor of oil heavy and thick in the air as he showed her how to hold the weapon and how to stand. The rush of blood heating her face and slightly shaky hands as she depressed the trigger. The pounding tsunami of heat and blood and power that coursed through her throbbing veins when she heard Bellamy say something she didn't even hear behind her.

He was relaxed; casual. Enjoying himself a little, if she had to guess. And though she had felt--as she often did lately--like not being around anyone she liked, she'd begun against her better judgement to find Bellamy Blake not entirely intolerable nor as nauseating as she'd anticipated.

Still. He'd been trying to get that cuff off her since they'd landed. He'd led his merry band of lost boys to trouble and violence and unrelenting, lawless chaos like he'd ripped a page out of Lord of the Flies.

_Whatever the hell we want._

And oh, Clarke _wanted_. She wanted worse than she'd ever admit to turn around and put a bullet in Bellamy Blake's forehead simply because he couldn't be trusted. He would be waiting there in the shadows, ready to do anything he needed to, if he thought it might keep Octavia safe. He would put a knife or perhaps the very bullet resting in the chamber now, right into Clarke's own back if he was given half the chance, she was sure of it.

And then just as suddenly as she'd been sure of it and slid her index finger into place over the trigger, she was even more sure that she was wrong.

Her back was to Bellamy right then. He'd given her a loaded gun, and stepped away to let her shoot it.If she turned and aimed it at him right now, as she'd thought she wanted to, he would be defenseless. Helpless and at her mercy. He would be able to do nothing but watch her take his life to ensure her own safety.He'd known that from the moment he handed her the gun and stepped away from both her and the other weapons.

It had taken Clarke that long to realize that Bellamy Blake was a lot of things, but stupid wasn't one of them.

If he wanted her dead, he would have shot her the moment he picked up the gun. He was letting her know in what she would come to recognize as his hallmark subtle, stoic way, that he was sending her a message; an olive branch of sorts, even. An acknowledgment that they would be stronger together, and that he understood whatever the hell we want was a game for children lost on an island; not warriors settling a new land.

_I'll trust you if you'll trust me._ That was the message, and Clarke received it loud and clear. She lowered the gun and let herself bathe in Bellamy's pride for a moment before getting back to business.

"I did just wake up one day and decide I would try to be the good guy, Charlie. _Especially_ in a world like this one. What better reason to change, to try and do better, than because we made a conscious choice to?"

"Yeah? And what do you do when your choice to be a good guy, gets someone else killed?"

"Then you feel sorry about it. And you carry that person with you, and you try to remember what you learned from them and not make the same mistake again. That's the only way they stay alive, Charlie. Is if we stay alive and carry their words and actions with us. If we don't do that for them, then they're just gone. Forever."

"Can I ask one more question? You won't like it."

Clarke sighed and rolled over under the blanket. "One more question, then you try to get some sleep."

"Deal." Charlie grew very somber then, her hesitance painted all over her face. The expression made her look even younger, and her voice was soft and respectful when she finally asked, "What did you learn from Lexa? I mean, in the end. She's gone, and you're alone. What did you learn from that?"

Clarke pressed her lips together for a moment, gathering her thoughts.

"That I’m never really alone. That even when I think I'm alone, Lexa's always with me. Madi is with me. My mom and dad are. And now you, Alicia, Al, and John and June are, too. You're part of me, even if you leave in a week. You can run wherever you want geographically, Charlie. But the ghosts will always find you. You can’t run away from who you are. People who care about you will always find you, too. Someday. Even if you don't know about them yet."

Clarke considered it for another moment, and though Charlie had seemed satisfied enough with her answer, she realized she wasn't done.

"And I learned that if you close your heart off to everyone because you're afraid of being hurt, you could miss out on something really beautiful. Lexa and I only had that because we were brave enough to let the other in. Even though it's probably the scariest thing either one of us ever had to do."

"Not every day will hurt this badly. As long as our hearts are still beating, there's hope. That's what I learned from Lexa," Clarke summarized quietly, feeling a tug in her chest as she thought of Lexa in her dream. Pleading with Clarke not to give up the same way she was now pleading with Charlie with the same goal in mind.

And maybe Clarke didn't feel very hopeful herself, but she realized it didn't matter. There was an old adage her father had been a huge fan of that went, _fake it til you make it_. Maybe if she did a good enough job convincing Charlie to have hope, she'd be able to find it in herself again, too, someday.

The only response was silence, and Clarke smiled to herself thinking maybe Charlie had fallen asleep after all. After several long moments, however, Charlie's admittedly groggy voice echoed from inside her sleeping bag as she mumbled into the dark.

"Thanks for the socks. And, you know. The rest."

Clarke smiled a little into the dark. "You're welcome, Charlie."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Morgan Jones: See, I could have sworn there was one more peanut butter left.  
> Michonne: That’s how it is, isn’t it? You always think there’s one more peanut butter left.
> 
> 🙃  
> had to give that nod, since the PB protein bars are my favorite running joke in twd universe. mostly cause michonne is shameless & i love seeing it. 
> 
> have a great weekend & remember to pack clean socks, whatever you're doing.  
> be well be kind _ste yuj_.  
> ~ PG


End file.
